Jasta Boelcke

Just finished off six doing repaint jobs on six planes of the Wings of War Fokker DR I Fritz Kempf models to represent six different planes from Jasta 2 (Boelcke) in February/March 1918. Information for the repaint jobs came from the Osprey book Jagdstaffel 2 'Boelcke' in their Aviation Elite Units series.


All the planes have been modified by having their rear fuselages painted white on the port side and black on the starboard, a feature of Jasta 2 DR1s that's strangely absent from the WoW model. My white paint failed to match that on the white squares around the Maltese Crosses on the prepaints so I overpainted these markings and replaced them with crosses from Dom's Decals. The Kempf markings on the wings were overpainted with Knarlock Green from the Citadel Foundation Paints range, a colour that almost perfectly matches the green on the original model.

I've cut of the pegs on the underside of the models and replaced them with 1/8" rare earth magnets also available from Dom. I can now use the models with Wings of War stands that I've modified with matching magnets and also with the Litko stands shown in the picture above which I use for playing Algernon Pulls it Off from Too Fat Lardies.

All the planes have been given pilots from Peter Pig's Range 6, Odds and Ends. These look about a hundred times better than the mishapen blobs that made an appearance on the Wings of War Series 2 models.

Kempf

Baumer - the Bs are white decals that have been overpainted in red. It worked better than any of my attempts to handpaint Bs

Loffler - handpainted stripes round the fuselage.

Papenmyer. I wish I was better at painting stripes.

Plange - A white stripe edged in black with Maltese Crosses from Dom's Decals on the sides and top of the fuselage.

Vallendor - letter V decals with hand painted serifs. Not quite the proper shape of V, but good enough for me.

I'm quite happy with them, but I'm not at all convinced that the base shade of green is historical. I much prefer the finish on the Wings of War Fokker DR I (Arthur Rahn) model which looks much more like what I see in the Osprey prints and photographs. But I'm too lazy to change all that and what I've done will do for now.

Albatros Jasta

Looking to get a coherent Jasta look for my six Albatros I spent a load of time looking round the Interwebs to find a historical Jasta for which I could find six planes that would be easy to paint based on the Wings of War prepainted Albatros DVa of Ernst Udet. I was unsuccesful so I decided to make up a colour scheme that was fictitious - but at least historically plausible.



Well here it is - lozenge pattern wings, black fuselage with personal insignia on the side and individually coloured tails. The Jasta leader, a bit of a show off if you ask me, has purple coloured wing top-surfaces and a white chevron on the front of his fuselage. The personal insignia were hand painted (white tail) taken from the Dom's Decals Jasta 19 sheet (green, purple, yellow) taken from a sheet of model railway letters (blue) or from the Warhammer 40K Space Marine decals sheet (red).



Again I've replaced the pegs on these aircraft with rare earth magnets so that I can easily use them on different types of flying stand.

Jasta 15 decals from Dom's decals

Just back from my holidays and I've got my hands on some of the Jasta 15 decals from Dom's Decals.

The decals are specifically designed for modifying the Wings of War prepainted Schafer model (WW08b) and the sheet contains all the decals you need to put eight individually marked Fokker DVIIs in the air. The instruction sheet is first class, even covering the different colours individual pilots had on their wheels and struts.

(Left to Right) Veltjens, Klein and von Beaulieu-Marconnay.

Dom's even provided snake decals for Schafer, which look much better than what's on the Wings of War original, and this means you can use your own shade of blue for repainting the WoW models rather than having to mix paints to mach the colour already on them.

There's actually markings for ten planes on the sheet, including that of Berthold, commander of JG.2, who flew a plane in his old Jasta's colours. But to do all ten planes properly you need to get your hands on some decals of German crosses in the appropriate style. These are also available from Dom (sheet no 144-GE-4)

I've only got six of the Wings of War prepainted Fokker DVIIs at the moment and, as you can see in the pictures, I've chopped off the pegs on the bottom of the planes and replaced them with some of the rare earth magnets which are also available from Dom.

This allows me to use the planes with both modified Wings of War bases and with some of the rather nice hex based flight stands available from Litko which I intend to use to play the hex-based "Algernon Pulls it Off" rules from Too Fat Lardies.

The background to the pictures is one of the European Field mats available from Hotz Mats. I bought a double sided mat, plain on one side and with 2"hexes on the other which will give me flexibity in the games I can play on it.

(Left to Right) Hantlemann, von Zeisgar & Klaudat

I'll be getting a few more Fokkers to round of my Jasta 15 soon.

Wings of War Series 2: British repaints

To convert the Sopwith Snipe (Barker) to 266 Squadron, I've painted out two of the white bands on the fuselage using Humbrol 117 (Matt US Light Green) and added letter transfers to the wings.


Below is the De Haviland DH4 (Atkey) as bought.


To expand my squadron I scraped of the number 5s using an modelling knife, touched up the paint using Tamiya XF-64 Red Brown and added number 3 decals. Easiest conversion yet.


The transfers I have been using are Fox Transfers pack FRH 4009 (BR British Railways Early Diesel & Electric Headcode Box Train Reporting Numbers) and came from Harburn Hobbies in Edinburgh. Fox make an extensive range of letters and numbers in various typefaces, colours and sizes and also do linings which look as though they could be very useful for people like me who can't paint straight lines. All their products are avialable through mail order.

Converting WoW Prepaints (4) Jasta 15 Fokker DVIIs

My starting point here is the WoW prepainted Fokker DVII (Schäfer) pictured below


To my mind this model needs quite a lot of work done on it before it is acceptable on a table. That big red line where the lozenge pattern transfers don't meet along the leading edge of the wings just has to go and I don't really like the look of those light grey tyres. So it's out with a paint brush.


I have painted the leading edges of the wings brown and then tried to continue some of the lozenges over the leading edge. I think it looks a lot better. I've also repainted the wheels dark grey and painted over the rear of the fuselage with Citadel Ultramarine Blue paint.

Here's my flight of three.


As far as I can make out all Jasta 15 Fokker D VIIs had the front of their fuselages painted red and the rear of the fuselage painted blue. All the emblems for individual pilots I've found on the web have been white. I've found images of the following pilots planes featured in a painting by Russel Smith

• Hugo Schafer: the winged serpent as featured on the prepaint
• Josef Veltjens: A rather strange arrow/crescent moon combination. (Picture of a model Albatros with the emblem here)
• Rudolph Berthold: A winged sword. (Also here on the rear cover of an Osprey book)
  
• Oliver von Beaulieu-Marconnay: The 4D brand used by his original regiment, the 4th Dragoons (also here)
  
• Gustav Klaudat: A Uhlan's lance (Image from a computer game here)

On the front cover of Osprey's Fokker D VII Aces of WWI there's

• Joachim von Zeigesar: Three feathers
• Georg von Hantelmann: Skull and crossbones emblem based on the cap badge of the Death's Head Hussars. (Another image here)

So having done some research and identified seven sets of historical markings what do I do? That's right I make up some emblems for fictitious pilots using transfers I've got in my collection.

Why? Well it's simply because I'm just not good enough with a paintbrush to do those historical emblems. I'm hoping that Dom of Dom's Decals will do some as he's starting work on some sheets of decals specifically designed to be used with the WoW prepaints. These ones would certainly make D VII conversions easily and if you think this is a good idea you could email Dom and promise to buy some of these decals if he makes them.

So what have I put on my planes? A Maltese Cross (from Veni, Vidi, Vici transfers), a chevron and an omega (both from games Workshop Space Marine transfer sheets). I think they look OK but if I could get historical decals I change over to them in an instant.


Nice planes - but that blob of a pilot is just awful

Wings of War Miniatures wave two: My first impressions

Jules from Figures in Comfort brought the full range of the second wave Wings of War miniatures along to the club last night so I just had to buy a few - eight to be exact.


First up is the Sopwith Snipe (Barker) a good looking model. The three of these I bought will be getting the 266 squadron treatment when I put some letters on the wings.


Here's a De Haviland DH4 (Atkey) which will do fine as it is for the moment. I'm going to get another one of these so I'll have to work out a way of making it look different.

The LFG Roland CII (Seibert & Pfleger) which again will do just as it is for recce and spotting missions. Of the models available I prefer the all over pale blue of the Richthofen variant of this model, but that one doesn't have the forward firing machine gun so I bought this one instead.


Last but not least the Fokker DVII (Schäfer) of which I bought three to make what will be a quite formidable flight - the DVII is quite the best plane in Wings of War with 16 damage points and some absolutely outrageous turns. The three of these I bought will all be converted to different planes from Jasta 15 in which were all painted with red front and blue rear fuselages - individual pilots having personal markings in the blue section. I'll probably just make up some markings for fictitious pilots but If I can convince Dom, of Dom's Decals, to do some historical ones for Jasta 15 then I'll change to them. I'm going to repaint the rear of the fuselage as the blue they have used in this model looks just a bit too purple for my tastes (though it doesn't really show up in the photo above).

I have one major problem with this model and that's the horrid looking lines of red that show up on the edges of the wings where the transfers used for the lozenge pattern don't cover up the red paint. But that's easily fixed with some paint as I have done on the plane on the right below.

Converting Wings of War Prepaints. (3) Albatros DVa

For my Albatros flight I decied to use Wings of War Ernst Udet prepaints as a base. Well they've got the lozenge pattern on the wings, which I like a lot, and the other Albatros with lozenges available, Ludvig Weber, has got a dirty great big number 1 on top of the wing. I didn't want a whole flight with that numbered 1 (though I suppose it could be 1 for the first flight) , so Udet it was.

I looked around the Internet to see if I could find details of any planes from the same Jasta that had similar colour schemes (I was full of optimism after my success with the DrIs) but I found nothing. Time to start making things up.


Looking at pics online it looked like some squadrons had aircraft with similarly painted fuselages but tails painted with either different colours or the same colours in different styles. So that's what I did and the results can be seen above. Each plane also has a different symbol on the side of the fuselage.
The original Wings of War painted model for Ernst Udet.

Repainted tail and two stripes on the fuselage. This model is based on the image I found here.


Repainted tail and a rather gothic looking number 3 transfer from a Citadel Miniatures Space Marine decal sheet.

Converting Wings of War Prepaints. (2) Sopwith Camels

As discussed in a previous post I am trying to make up flights of aircraft from the same squadron by converting the Wings of War prepainted miniatures - but without doing a complete repainting job.

I tried to do some research on the British but all that happened was I got confused. There were all sorts of combinations of letter, numbers and stripes that changed several times through the course of the war. The solution, I decided was to make up a fictitious squadron.


Biggles, Algy and Ginger set out to bag some Huns.

These models are based on the Wings of War model of William Barker's Sopwith Camel. To convert it to Biggle's Squadron colours I painted out some of the stripes on the rear fuselage and the heart painted on the tailfin using Humbrol 75, Bronze Green.

Then I added some large recognition letters on the upper surface of the wing using waterslide transfers I found in my local model railway shop, Harburn Hobbies in Edinburgh. It was quite hard to find transfers that were both the right size and not too modern looking so many thanks to the assistant who spent about fifteen minutes searching through their extensive stock of transfers before finding these ones, originally meant for British diesel locomotives in the 1950s and early 60s.


Those models may have completely made up markings, but look like they could be a real squadron and that's good enough for the likes of me.

Notes (added 10th March, 2008): Thanks to Tim who, in a comment on this blog, reminded me that Captain James Bigglesworth (Biggles) was said by his creator, W.E Johns, to be in the fictitious 266 Squadron RFC. Looking around the numerous Biggles sites on the Internet I find that while Algy fought alongside Biggles in the Great War, he did not meet up with the famous Ginger until after the war. That must be another carrot-top flying with him in the picture above.

My rather limited reference books for this period and the numerous web sites devoted to WWI aviation suggest that most British planes carried identifying letters on the sides of the fuselage rather than on the top of the wing. Indeed I have not yet found a single example of this being done by a squadron equipped with Camels. All I can say is that some squadrons put letters on their wings, that 266 Squadron are unusual and that it works better that way when you're playing a game.

Converting Wings of War Prepaints. (1) Fokker DrIs from Jasta 2

I'm not sure that converting is the right word here, as it's all done with a paintbrush. Anyway, I've been playing Wings of War a lot recently, with my son and his friends and at the wargames club. I don't like using planes from several different squadrons in my games and that's what is provided in the WoW prepaints. Similarly I don't like using planes that are all the same. So I set out to convert some of the prepaints to represent different planes from the same squadron.


First up a kette (flight) of Fokker DrIs from Jagdstaffel 2. Fritz Kempf leads Otto Löffler (back) and Wilhelm Papenmeyer (right).

Looking round the Internet I found that the WoW Kempf prepaint was an ideal candidate for conversion. On the FokkerDr1.com website I found a page with a whole series of pictures of Jasta 2 DrIs from March 1918. All of these are the same base colour as Kempf's plane but with slightly different details. Those of Löffler and Papenmeyer were basically all green planes with different coloured stripes round the fuselage. These planes are also illustrated in Jagstaffel 2 "Boelcke" in Osprey's Aviation Elite Units series.

Looking through my paint collection I found that the Citadel "Knarlock Green" foundation paint is an almost perfect matcjh for the colour of the WoW prepaint. Paint out the details for Kempf, paint in bands of colour for Löffler and Papenmeyer and I was sorted.

But reading the Osprey book and studying the pictures in it leads me to believe that the WoW Kempf prepaints aren't very accurate.

1. The decals on the WoW prepaints are not positioned properly or carefully, at least on some (probably most) models. In real life the rear end of the white square which surrounded the German cross seems to have been positioned in line with the front end of the tailplane. On the WoW prepaints they seem to be all over the place and are usually in different positions on the left and right sides of the model. This makes painting stripes round the fuselage a bit difficult.
2. The DrIs of Jasta 2 are described as being in "the usual Fokker streaky camouflage finish on upper surfaces". From the pictures I've seen it looks like that was what is represented on the WoW model DRI for Arthur Rahn rather than the green that comes with Kempf.
   
3. The planes of Jasta 2 carried the black and white scheme of their tailplanes down onto the sides of the fuselage, the pictures in the Osprey book show the rears of the fuselage under the tailplane matching the colours on the tailplane, black on the right, white on the right for Kempf, this is not done on the WoW prepaint. Other planes in the Jasta seem to have reversed the colours on the tail and rear fuselage.
   

All in all it seems that the Kempf prepaint is not particularly accurate models - though I'm quite happy to use the three models I've got for gaming.