john redman

The parachute units were formed after the war started when Churchill observed the Germans in action in Belgium, Crete etc and wondered where our paratroopers were. The Thompson was kind of an early war weapon, purchased because Britain didn't have its own SMG. They were distributed to commandos and so on, but by the time the paratroopers were established, so was the Sten. The US story was quite similar except they equipped with the grease gun M3 as their SMG (because of the Thompson's weight and unique ammunition). Likewise I am pretty sure no British units used the bazooka, which these guys are doing. They would have had the obsolescent Boys ATR (briefly) then the PIAT. US paratroopers would have used the bazooka, but if that's what these guys are, they shouldn't have Thompsons. So nothing really marks them out as anyone's paras in particular. The 1/32 set is more accurate, so it's a shame Airfix didn't pantograph these down to 1/76, as they did with the Afrika Korps and others.

To be fair Ratch it still looks pretty good 🙂

total legend

You could try a coat of gloss then rear ish it in matt. I find the Humbrol 49 spray cans very reliable.

Is the diorama base supposed to be on a forward airstrip in France? I'm trying to fathom why there's a dirt road on an RAF base otherwise!

ISTR these were originally released as just generic "Paratroopers" and didn't get badged "British Paratroopers" until some years later! They have the wrong weapons - Thompson SMGs and bazookas instead of Stens and PIATs - and they lack things like pouches. Also, shame none is wearing the red beret. On the positive side, they are well animated and they still paint up well as the OP's examples show.

I built a 1/72 Walrus years ago too but I can't remember whether it was the AFX one or the MBX. Either way, they're a bit pricey now so the sooner AFX issue the Walrus in 1/72 scale the better.

ISTR the previous Airfix Liberator, of 1960s vintage, had the most working parts of any Airfix kit.

Well, somehow Lego manage it.

Thinking of ways in which odd bits of paint-stained multicoloured plastic could be posted back to Airfix or elsewhere on diesel vans to save the planet feels like a dead end. It would surely make more sense to take a step back and think about whether the process before this stage could be reworked so as to make it more feasible. Aside from identifying parts during assembly, and cheapness of course, there seems no need for the sprues to be sent out with the kit. Lego blocks don't come on sprues. In fact, neither does almost anything else made of plastic. When you buy a new wiper blade for your car, it doesn't come on a sprue you have to detach. Plastic rawlplugs do but that's about it, and they're pennies. So could you detach the parts from the sprues before the packaging stage, with the part numbers either engraved onto the part, or the parts for each stage bagged separately, or moulded in different colours for ease of IDing them? Everything else you're expected to assemble, from flatpack furniture to Lego, works like that. The producer that makes the sprues then collects them all up each day without wastefully shipping them hither and yon. They'd never leave the factory. Cost would probably be the issue, but there's going to be a cost to this no matter what you do. It definitely won't! If recycling made economic sense, people would pay us for our recyclables. The fact that we have to pay to have it taken away speaks volumes. In 2018, Westminster Council incinerated 80-odd % of the rubbish it collected. That wouldn't happen if it had any value. So when you carefully separate your junk and put your cardboard in the green bin, it makes no difference - it more or less all just gets bundled back together again and burnt.

When a Kittyhawk was found in the desert in 2012 it was instantly ID'ed as a "Spitifire"!

Yup, although even here you can actually end up failing to see the wood for the trees if you aren't careful. My current thing is Dogfight Doubles They Never Made But Shoulda. The rules are, one Series 1 and Series 2 kit (or two Series 1 if WW1), and it doesn't matter if either has since been reboxed into a higher series, as long as that tooling was 1 or 2 originally. To create these, sometimes you can pair two kits with the standard decals, e.g. Hannover CL.III versus DH.4; Hellcat versus Dinah. This is what Airfix usually did, hence anachronisms like the 1940 Bf110 and 1943 JE@J, although in two cases - Cessna/MiG and Mirage/MiG - Airfix provided different decals to make the pair work as a pair (although, as noted above, they still don't). Often my DFDTNMBS pairs require different decals for one or both aircraft. The Swordfish versus FIAT G50 pairing is fine out of the box, as is the Whirlwind versus Arado 196, but for the Buffalo versus PE2 I need FiAF decals for the Buffalo, while for the Starfighter and HAL Gnat I need PAF and IAF decals. I also have an F5A versus Jet Provost pair for which I need IRAF and IQAF decals. I spent ages searching online catalogues for the Iranian decals before realising that, er, the kit decals actually are Iranian...OK, IRAF rather than IIAF but I don't think there was a lot of difference. This is the kind of obvious thing only an obsessive could overlook.

I can confirm that's still a thing. My daughters both did GCSE history and neither of them has heard of the Spitfire. They've seen Spitfire models aplenty in their lives in the house, they've been taken to Shuttleworth on flying days, they've done the Airfix make and take several times, but they can't tell a Spitfire from a soup spoon. We were at the beach last summer and from the sky I heard a distant but magical, blood-stirring sound, one to make your hair stand on end. I said "I can hear a Spitfire!...where is it? Look! Look! There it is! A Spitfire!" Melissa: "Like, what's a, like, Spitfire?" Olivia: "Is it, like, a bomber?" They returned to their phones. It was over West Wittering beach. I'm not sure where it would have been flying from. On a sunny day, when it turned away presenting its underside it was invisible. Grey paint really does work!

Notice how that black isn't really black-black. It's more charcoal, and would be lighter still in bright desert sunlight. This is great for modellers because it means you can paint it any shade of dark grey or black you like, and it won't be wrong 🙂

Ratch has posted his nice build of the 1/32 Crusader on here. The best thing about the kit, which you'd not know from photos, is that the way the Christie suspension has been engineered, you can set each wheel independently at a different height. So if you wanted to pose it on a bit of uneven desert terrain, with the wheels not in a nice neat straight line as they would be on level ground but uneven, to match the ground, you can do that. The prices are getting collectory these days, especially for the Lee and Grant, so if ever I persuade myself that it's possible to wargame in this scale I'll go for 1/35 rather than 1/32. You can still use Airfix 1/32 figures with their 1/35 tanks because most of the figures aren't all that 1/32 🙂