Build Adventure of Airfix’s Fokker E-II & E-III Cat No A 01086 & A 01087.

[John Symmons]

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'I’ll not go into the history of the Fokker E series of fighters except to say they went into service in late 1915 & 16 and remained in service as a front line aircraft into the late 1916 and ear;y 1917 by which time they’d been superceded by the new Albatros fighters. It was then only used as a trainer for several more months. It’s main claim to game being the first fighter to have the machine gun firing through the propeller using an interrupter mechanism this gave rise to what was called the Fokker scourge in 1916 where the RFC pilot’s life was measured in weeks if not days. It’s interesting to note the basic layout of the E series set the trend of all fighters up until the late thirties in that it had a rotary / radial engine with one later two machine guns firing through the propeller and it was a monoplane, Ok later the rotary was replaced by a radial engine and the monoplane became a bi-plane, it wasn’t until the advent of the Messerschmitt 109 series and the Hurricane and Spitfire that things really changed. What I find interesting is the size of this early fighter they’re quite large compared to most WW 1 fighters being almost as big as the Messerschmitt 109’s and Hurricanes. Another point of interest is that the E series used an all moving tail-plane and rudder that wasn’t resurrected until the advent of the supersonic fighters of the late fifties and sixties, and aren’t modem designers now looking at poly-morphing wings, basically a fancy name for wing-warping?

 

These two kits are identical in-so-much as the plastic is concerned, and is the usual light grey we’ve come to expect from the Airfix new tooling's, the only difference being the propeller used, although the wing of the E-III was re-designed and was slightly bigger than the E-II, but I suppose in 1/72 scale the difference is hardly noticeable. The differences are in the box art and the supplied decals and colour schemes. Only one version is offered in the decals for both kits, and both kits were made OTB (Out-The-Box) the only thing I added was the rigging; as suggested by Airfix; the pilot in the E-III was changed to one from the Dark Studio set; suitably trimmed to fit; and I added the Fokker propeller decal, copied from a Roden decal set, that I’d made up and had printed when making the old Revell version of the E-III.

 

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Photo of the sprues, both kits being identical as far as the plastic is concerned.

 

As mentioned above I’d made the Revell kit of the E-III a few weeks earlier and was interested to how the new Airfix tooling measured up to this old; mid 1960’s, kit. I made the Revell one as I’d previously made the; again Revell; Moraine Saulnier ‘N’ and I’d enjoyed that so hopefully I’d enjoy the E-III, hard brittle plastic and all. I’ll be comparing the new Airfix with this older kit in this build, but I must say the older kit stands up quite well even by today’s standards even with it’s inaccuracies, it’s certainly simpler and easier to build but of course not as accurate or comprehensive as the newer Airfix kit.

 

Construction.

 

The instructions are again the usual Airfix monochromatic rendered drawings with the assembled parts from the previous step shown tinted red. The first two pages of the large A4, 8 page booklet being the usual multi lingual potted history, basic instructions and assembly symbols. These are followed with 4 pages of rendered drawings over 19 stages, then a full page of very nice rigging diagrams. The final page being left blank. The only colour being the painting / decal guide colour profile on the box rear.

 

Assembly, as usual, begins with the interior being the rear bulkhead, seat frame, seat and control column all being glued to the under-fuselage. The fuselage is then assembled from two sides with the top split down the centre and the underside which includes the tail surfaces as a separate piece. This is good thinking as the tail plane is still quite fragile and if separate would be almost impossible to make the model without it breaking. The Revell kit is moulded with the fuselage top and sides moulded as one with the bottom and tail-plane as separate parts. This means very little or no detail on the fuselage sides. The Airfix fuselage making up into a long box section, I’ve always had trouble making these box like assemblies in that they always seem to assemble out of square. With the Fokker's fuselage, I glued the two side pieces first along the spine from the inside using a flat surface to get the top square then when almost dry added the underside. In both kits the curvature of the underside didn’t match the two sides being much flatter, so would need to be “sprung” into the curve of the assembled sides. The E-III I started at the rear and worked forwards while with the E-II I reversed this by starting at the front, this later way proved to be the best way as the underside can be more easily aligned, Fitting the rear first can be a bit airy-fairy that lead to a problem later on. To back-track a bit, when fitting the bulkhead in step 1 use the fuselage halves as a jig and positioned it as far to the rear as possible, but to not blocking the wing locating holes in the fuselage sides ... or so I thought.

 

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The main assemblies done and painted. The two pointy things on the top right of the mat are a couple of bits of stretched sprue that I use as needles to help with the rigging. In the background is the Revell E-III and the ESCI SE 5a. Note the starboard wing of the E-III ( the grey one.) is now missing most of it’s main fixing tab as it was being fouled by the cockpit bulkhead.

 

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The two very nicely detailed engines that turn with the propeller but the bearing in the bulkhead is a  bit wobbly and the cylinders foul the cowling. The undercarriage of both models showing the rigging, this is when those sprue needles came in handy. This rigging is much easier to do at this stage than leaving it until last. 

 

Another big difference between the old Revell kit and the newer Airfix tooling is in assembling the wings. The Revell one the wings are moulded together joined be the fuselage lower centre section, in mine the wings had a slight dihedral when assembled, This I was able to correct when rigging by springing the wings flat with the rigging thread. In the Airfix model the whole fuselage can be made up including the undercarriage and adding the wings and engine last. This is how I assembled mine. ( See Photos) This greatly eases painting and decalling and aids rigging as the undercarriage and front wires “D” can be more easily added though holes drilled in the front fuselage part B4 and fixed inside the model out of sight.  The under carriage legs went together reasonably easily it just takes care to ensure it’s true and square, I added the wheels after the whole assembly was well and truly set, and after the undercarriage rigging had been added. Odd how one kit went together without any problems, but the E-III, basically the same kit seemed to be fighting me at every step. The wheels were another oddity for me; why have the wheel disc in the inside when the outside would have been better giving a cleaner demarcation when  painting the tyres. The E-II wheels went on easily but the E-III gave me all sorts of trouble. I wonder if other modellers have dry fitted parts and got them to fit perfectly, only to find as soon as you add glue they just don’t want to go in place. This is what happened to me; with both the E-III wheels, holes big enough to fit the axial's; paint scrapped off the gluing surfaces; dry fitting perfectly; added glue and nothing went according to plan. It took three goes to get one wheel on and four or five goes for the other wheel. Luckily I was alone as the air was decidedly blue. Honestly the rigging was easier than putting those wheels on.

 

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Both fuselages and wings painted, and decals applied. All going on quite easily. Note the missing tab on the E-III starboard wing.

 

When adding the cowling cheeks I used the engine bulkhead as a jig to help ensure the correct position. It was when checking if the starboard cheek wing cut-out was correctly fitting the starboard wing that I discovered the, E-III again, wing wouldn’t fit into the fuselage slots. The port one was fine, but the starboard one was being somehow blocked by the internal bulkhead, looks like my gluing the E-III fuselage underside from the tail had upset the internal alignment so the wing lug had to be drastically shortened. The E-II wing was OK; every-thing fitted fine. Lesson learnt.

 

With both fuselages assembled time to paint and decal. Over the past few months I have been making quite a few WW 1 aircraft and have used several colours for the doped linen finish. One thing I found out is that the canvas or linen covering was varnished with several layers of varnish some pigmented others not and a cellulose shrinking varnish was used usually followed by a top clear protective coat. This made the aircraft glossy, but this quickly faded or dulled to a semi-gloss or satin finish. Very rarely was the finish a full matt finish as the top varnish was often touched-up as it became worn through general wear-and-tear and weathering. I’ve used some very old Humbrol enamel linen No H 74, and various shades of pale yellow from the Vallejo range including beige, ice yellow, buff, yellow ochre and dark sand, personally I feel the Humbrol linen and Vallejo beige and ice yellow give the best looking results with buff for a more weathered, used aircraft. The E-II was brush painted with Vallejo Beige, the E-III called for Humbrol H 31 Slate Grey which I do not have and there’s no equivalent in the Vallejo range. In one of my Osprey books they quoted that the E-III was finished in an dull green and several other sources show it as a dull greyish green, so I went with that mixing out several Vallejo paints to a colour I thought as about right. Even the Airfix profile shows the aircraft as a dull greyish green not slate grey which to my reckoning is a blue-ish grey. Maybe my dull green could have been a bit lighter as I feel it’s a is a bit too dark or heavy, but I can live with it as-is. The engine cowling and forward fuselage were painted with Vallejo silver the over painted with natural steel; I often use this colour in preference to silver as I feel, especially in 1/72 scale, that silver is too bright and natural steel gives a more realistic finish. (As an aside I’ve recently made three Nieuports ( ESCI, Roden & Eduard.) all in overall silver and painted those with a Tamiya rattle can White Primer, then Vallejo Silver, then Tamiya Titanium Silver top coat with steel on the struts & cowlings, Looks good, pity I can’t show them here.)

 

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Fuselages almost finished the engines and wheels only tacked in place with liquid tape.

The pilot in the E-III is from the Dark Studio range, both look pretty exposed but looking at photos of the time this was how they were.

The Silver on the front still needs to be over coated as it’s rubbing of with handling..

The rudder, gun and pylon still need to be added.

 

Both Airfix kits come with some excellent decals some being quite large, like the wing crosses and fuselage coloured bands. As I’ve read that the bands on the E-II didn’t fit to well I decided to paint these together with the fuselage bands on the E-III and white wing cross back-grounds. Black is black and white is white so far easily enough, the yellow on the E-II was easily matched with Vallejo Yellow Ochre, and the blue on the E-III with Vallejo Prussian Blue. The E-II came out fine but when I went to decal the E-III I found I’d put the blue stripes on the wrong way around so had to use the decals anyway, they fitted Ok-ish but did need some touching up on the edges. The wing decals also I finally used as-is as my painting wasn’t as good as I’d thought, but despite my fears they went of OK. One thing I did appreciate was that the rudder cross didn’t have a white back-ground, as I’d often find these full rudder decals never fit properly often being to big, and you have to trim the edges afterwards then touch-up the edges and chipped decal with paint. I can’t confirm if the E-II stripe decal fits or not as I didn’t use it. Generally the decals behaved very well as we’ve come to expect from Airfix & Cartograph being both in register and good colour opacity. Another nice touch is Airfix has included a few stencil markings in the decals although on the E-III they do tend to disappear on the dull green colour. One small thing decal No 15 or 12 , E-II and E-III respectively is best not used it’s far easier to paint, getting the decal to sit nicely into the hole isn’t worth it.

 

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Painting done time to add the wings. The way Airfix has suggested to get the wings fitting level is quite ingenious and works very well. I used a couple of foam styrene blocks weighted with two 250 cc plastic jars filled with water to hold every-thing in place while the glue set. Before fitting the wings the rigging holes had to be re-drilled. I’d previously drilled these holes (0.3 mm) where Airfix had thoughtfully marked them, but the wing decals had covered them up. Holding the wing up to a light it was a simple matter to puncture the decals in the correct place for the rigging wires. Wings dry and set, time for rigging. If you’re new to rigging WW 1 aircraft, the Fokker E series, like the Morane-Saulnier “N”, are probable the best place to start as you basically go round and round the fuselage and through the wing holes although the pylon on the fuselage can get a bit crowded if you’re not careful. I used some fine black mono-filament “invisible” thread. You can even forego gluing where the thread passes through the wing if you’re worried about the super-glue lifting the wing decals. The undercarriage was rigged before adding the wings. Airfix is to be congratulated on the very comprehensive rigging diagram also including the control wires for the elevators and rudder, although finding the elevator horns on the elevator axial can be a bit of a trial, you’ll also have to drill holes in the fuselage for these wires but Airfix has moulded these places onto the top and bottom of the fuselage rear. About the only thing missing is the upper elevator control wires, if you wish to add these they come fro the same place as the rudder wires. I did this to both E’s although I must admit it’s a lot of PT for so little. So all I can say is it’s up to you, but if you’re a beginner I’d say maybe next time after some more practice.

 

Finally with the rigging finished all that was left was to add the engine, propeller and boarding steps. The engine and cowling went on with no trouble except the E-III again,, the propeller and engine do rotate but not spin. The engines both catching to cowling somewhere, but I can live with that, as now I can move the propeller for posing. The pilots were the Airfix one in the E-II but I used a Dark Studio on for the E-III although he had to be trimmed to fit.

 

Final bits added were the boarding steps and propeller. Just be VERY careful in removing the steps from the sprue as they are tiny and you can hear the carpet monster licking it’s lips in anticipation. I found it a bit odd that Fokker had added steps on both sides, usually the step is only on the port (left) side. This was because the early pilots often came from the old Cavalry Regiments where you always mount your horse on the left side, and this carried over to them boarding their planes. Even today aircraft are boarded from the port side even with passenger airlines. Before anyone throws a fit I know some aircraft like the Mosquito has the boarding hatch on the starboard side, but in general most aircraft are boarded from the left. Every time I’ve flown I’ve always boarded from the port side except the Caravelle where I boarded under the tail. I see in the Dr 1 and subsequent Fokker aircraft the boarding step is only on the port side. The propellers of both aircraft were painted with laminations using Humbrol natural wood (H 110) and Vallejo Buff then Vallejo wood grain and varnished. The boss was painted with Natural Steel. While laminations on the propeller look good, in this scale they can be a pain and I’m in two minds as to how accurate they really are. I know the propellers were made of laminations, but I’m sure most carpenters worth there salt would have stained the propeller to hide the laminations, I know my second uncle, John Zoller, an old school cabinet maker who only used hand tools, certainly would never have left the laminations showing. If you can check out the propellers on show at Ducksford and Yeovelle there’s not a lamination in sight, and they don’t really show-up in period photos. So in future I’ll just do a normal wooden propeller, much simpler.

 

So how do the old Revell one and the new Airfix one compare. Oddly both are the same size; I say oddly as I’ve build several of the old Revell WW 1 aircraft and they’re usually slightly bigger than models from other manufactures, I’m at present building two SPAD XIII one Revell and the other from ESCI, and the Revell one is appreciably bigger, so much so I actually measured it, and it came out at 1/67 scale, the ESCI one being exactly 1/72. The Revell E-III is probably the easier to build but does have the cowling cheeks symmetrical, which is of course wrong and the moulded warping of the wings giving an anhedral droop, but it isn’t that bad considering it’s age. The Airfix Fokker E’s are far better kit although I’d not really recommend them to to a novice. They’re both fairly straight forward builds, but do have traps and pitfalls for the unwary, like separating some of the small and fragile parts from the sprues such as the undercarriage legs, tail skid and the boarding steps. But having said that Airfix has made a really nice job of this WW 1 fighter and with a few builds under your belt I’m sure a good model will result, and you’ll get to try some rigging to add to your skill set. Let’s now hope Airfix will expand this line with a new retooling of the Dr 1 Tri-plane Sopwith Camel etc etc etc. What I feel would be really nice is a re-tool of their venerable R.E.8 with a ground diorama setting, with some sand-bags and ground crew, or am I being greedy.

 

I’ve included some photos of the finished models with a couple on cameos, you might have noticed that I was also building in parallel an old SE 5a also an ESCI kit. Since building these Fokker E’s I’v been on a bit of a WW 1 binge having done the Fokker F1 ( Dr 1 prototype without the wingtip skids) D.VI three D.VII, E. V or D.VIII, Bristol fighter as a night fighter with the twin rear gun and the engine exposed on one side, (That was a rigging nightmare, errrrhm; maybe I should rephrase that as a nightmare to rig.) SE 5a mentioned above, and the three Nieuports and now the two SPAD’s. I was toying with the Airfix Sopwith Pup or a Hanover but it seems a Gloster Gladiator has sneaked it’s way onto the table. As I have two of these, I’m toying with the idea of the Finnish one with skis, and maybe an RAF one in the Silver 1936 > 37 finish. That’s it for now hope you enjoyed this adventure and the photos, as usual all comments welcome, and keep them coming.

 

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Airfix E-II finished.

 

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Two views of the Airfix E-III. Strangely the rigging wire have shown up as white in the photos. They are actually quite dark. Probably it’s the sunlight reflecting off them.

 

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A view of both aircraft together.

 

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A quartette of early WW 1 Monoplanes. The Airfix ones being the E-II on the left middle and the E-III in the foreground. The other two are the E-II and Morane Saulnier Type N mentioned in the above.

 

Remember we do this for fun                                               John the Pom.

 

[Dark Earth]

Very Nicely done John - and thanks for taking the effort to provide the buildup article.

Nice to hear how others work, where you encounter difficulties, and how they are overcome.

Chris

[Dominic Thomas]

I have to say, very well done, John. That’s the sort of review/discussion I would expect to see in a top quality Modelling magazine. Ticks all the boxes for me - interest, information, subject, advice, and comparisons. I’m glad you could sneak in some competitors’ offerings in the background.

[John Symmons]

Hi Chris & Dominic.

Thanks for the complements, and glad you liked the build. Lets just hope Airfix do a few more WW 1 subjects. It's a bit odd that Airfix and many others such as Roden, Eduard, Esci, Merit and even Lindbery all did WW 1 subjects when they started out but then they became like hens teeth. I think the Airfix Fokker E-II, E-III and their BE 2 are the only modern WW 1 releases from a main stream manufacture, Not including Roden which although very good and challenging are a bit like short-run kits.

 

Remember we do this for fun                                               John the Pom

[Ratch]

They look good  😎