I have always believed that the Fairey Battle was a plane capable and powerful, with a design ahead of its time, but misused, as if the tactical principles of the Great War remained in force during the invasion of France in 1940. Compared with other single-engine bombers, an advanced engine available and it was aerodynamically cleaner. So I wanted to show how advanced their line was to create a fighter based on its shape. Think that was in 1937 when it was received by the first squadrons. So I take an unfinished Battle of MPM had at 1 /72 scale and changed, putting elements of 1 /48 as the cabin and engine. The naval scheme, it is logical, since his high cockpit gives good visibility for aircraft carrier operations. The Fulmar was a similar attempt two- seater fighter but that did not reach the 500km / h had its days counted. Imagine a Battle of folding wings, as a torpedo plane and a  Boulton Paul turret, in addition to fuel tanks in the bomb bay of the wings, and ... the good thing is that my model is not a version or a development of the model home, just trying to dispel the myth that it was a bad machine, praise and exalt their design and offer a different perspective, it is another plane with his original design.

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Finally revealed! Years before the Su-47 (S-37) Berkut FSW Russian Jet was made public, there was another Red Star aircraft secretly hidden away in a dark and moist concrete bunker. Not one major Soviet design bureau confirmed its involvement, but it was assumed that either MiG or Sukhoi had a principal role in its development. One man was able to smuggle some blurry pictures out of the country, but they got lost in a terrible boat accident. The man survived, and now all he had was his freedom and the mental images of this extraordinary design. He made his way to States, and convinced a police sketch artist to draw what he could remember. The sketches revealed a slim, nimble aircraft, ready to take to the air. Once the sketches were finished, the stranger smiled, stood up and walked to the door, leaving the sketches behind. No-one ever saw him since. The policeman took the sketches home with him. They were lying on the dinner table, when the policemen's brother-in-law, a General Dynamics design engineer came over for a visit. Upon viewing these drawings, he insisted to take them with him to the office, but the policeman refused and in the fight that followed, the sketches were thrown in the fireplace, turning them into nothing but some blackened, deformed slivers of paper. Returning to his office, the design engineer tried to draw up what he remembered from the sketches on the table. He remembered most of the aircrafts sleek lines, but he unwillingly inversed the sweep angle of the wings. It was never explained how these drawings finally ended up on the desk of the chief designer, but the rest is history: a few years later, the company entered the YF-16 in the Lightweight Fighter (LWF) competetion and won...
Here are 1/144 scale version of that Russian YF-16 predecessor... enjoy!





Flankerz

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Captain Harl of the Rebel 91st Battalion's anti-walker platoon was quietly confident,
despite the panicky comms traffic they'd picked up earlier. With mountains to their left
and soft ground to their right, the Imperial walkers would have to come through the trees
dead ahead, and by the time they cleared them they'd be well within range. He looked
around his position, checking the tangler teams again. Each team had two remote-control
missiles on tripod launch rails, connected to each end of 100 metre spool of
mono-filament cable. In front of him, the command-mine control box was all wired up
and armed, and the kill teams with their mag-bombs were ready to go. They'd learnt a
lot since Hoth.



Suddenly, a heavy explosion to his right showered him with earth. More plasma bolts
were screeching overhead, and he sought desperately for the source of the fire. It took
him a moment to re-calibrate his brain, because the fire was coming from across the
soft ground, and from a very long range.

"What the Hell...."



Harl scrabbled about for his macro-binoculars. Unbelievably, grey Imperial vehicles
were advancing across the marshland, showers of spray and mud obscuring his view
of how they were doing it. He was completely wrong-footed: all the mines were between
his position and the woods and the tangler teams' arcs wern't good.

"Target right flank! Re-deploy! Re-deploy!"



His men scrambled to point their equipment at the new threat. A corporal shouted
something he didn't catch, pulled some plugs out of the command-mine box and ran
off towards the trees before he could question it. The fire was coming in thick and fast
now and they were taking serious casualties. Eventually, tanglers lept from their rails
and sped off towards the mystery vehicles. Rudders hard over once past them, they
spun round and round the target until it's legs would be wrapped in cable and unable
to move. it was foolproof and tested in battle many times, but today it made no difference.
He watched in horror as the vehicles simply ploughed on, dragging the spent tangler
rockets behind them like discarded toys.



He was still frozen, watching the advancing vehicles, when a blurred sillouette appeared
in his view finder. He put the focus cues on it, and it resolved into the shape of the
corporal. He was running towards the Imperial attack, from cover to cover, and he was
carrying something: one of the command mines. Eventually, he got himself in front of the
lead vehicle, stood up, and threw the mine like a discus. It cost him his life as a shower
of blaster bolts blew him to pieces a second later, but his aim had been true and the mine
had gone under the vehicle. As it advanced, it suddenly vanished in a heavy explosion of
mud and earth, and then shuddered to a halt.



Harl's men began to cheer at the sight of this, but their cheers were cut short as, to their
amazement, the Imperial vehicle didn't fall over: it just sat there, pouring fire at them.
Harl couldn't understand it: how the hell were they doing this? Watching though his
binoculars again, he got his answer. Another vehicle turned sharply sideways to go around
the disabled one, and he could see that it was rolling on multiple wheels, with a mechanism
that laid a kind of articulated "carpet" under them and then picked it up once they'd rolled
over it. In the back of his mind, he knew he'd seen something like this in a history book,
but it wouldn't come, and this was no time for reverie.



Harl looked around at their piles of kit. It was all useless: these things rolled over the
tangler cable, they were too fast for the kill teams to approach with mag-bombs, the
grav-field disrupters were irrelevant, there was nothing they could do. He made a decision.

"Retreat! Fall back! Every man for himself!"

They didn't need telling twice. The Imperials gave no quarter, blizzards of blaster bolts
cutting through the men as they ran, felling many. In his fear and frustration, Harl wanted
desperately to turn and shake his fist a them, make some sort of defiant gesture, but he
didn't. He just ran, like the rest.



At the command post, General Timpu was seething with frustration and his staff were
taking the brunt of it.

"How in the gods' names can they be there man? They'd have to be walking at 40kmh
to do that and no walker's that fast, not even an AT-ST! Are all our scouts drunk?  These
reports don't make any sense at all!"

"It's all true Sir."

The General spun around to see Captain Harl in the doorway. He was panting and
dishevelled, and nursing an ugly blaster burn on his arm. Despite this, he’d had time
to dredge his memory.

“They’re not walking General, they’re using tracks....”

“Tracks!” Timpu was thunderstruck.

“Well the devious Imperial bastards.....”





(Note that the AT-TS obeys Imperial design rule 1a: "All vehicles shall be painted grey
irrespective of operational enviroment" and rule 2b "All vehicles, no matter how
formidable, shall incorporate a critical weakness that can be exploited by some reckless
hero with more bollocks than brain cells". In this case, one of the vulnerable umbilicals
at the back has saved him the trouble by disconnecting itself.... )

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Here is a What if... the Grumman F7F-3 Tigercat was used in Vietnam instead of the Douglas Skyraider. After going through a complete overhaul and rebuild of the wings main spar and addition of eight outer wing hard points by Grumman. With updated Pratt & Whitney R-2800-52 rated at 2,500hp it was a real hot rod over the skies of North Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. It was reported that the North Viet Cong were forced to keep running supplies down the Ho Chi Minh trail, knowing they would be hunted by the Black Dragons. Few lived to tell of the fierce attacks of the Black Dragons that flew only at night.

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