Eduard's 1/48 scale
Fokker DR.1 Triplane

by Cameron Lynch

Eduard's 1/48 scale Fokker Dr.1 Dual Combo is available online from Squadron.com

While Manfred von Richtofen and Werner Voss were more famous, Lt. Josef Jacobs was the most successful proponent of the maneuverable Fokker fighter with over 30 kills scored in his distinctive black Triplane during the spring and summer of 1918. 

Jacobs became so proficient in the Triplane that he preferred it to the superior Fokker D.VII and continued to fly the Triplane well into October 1918, long after it had been replaced elsewhere on the front.  Lt. Jacobs favorite Triplane was 450/17 which was painted black overall with a large winged devil painted on the fuselage sides.  Jacobs Jacobs survived the war with 48 kills, tying him with Voss for fourth on the list of German aces from the First World War.  Jacobs died at the age of 84 in Munich in 1978.

I hadn’t built a biplane, or a WWI aircraft for that matter, since I was a child.  I’ve collected several kits because I’ve always been fascinated by the first war in the air and the aircraft and pilots that battled each other over Flanders’ fields.  But like everyone else I was extremely nervous about ensuring that all of the appropriate bits and bobs were correctly aligned, and then properly rigged.  So I took the easy way out by building an airplane and a kit that was easy to align and largely un-rigged, the Eduard Fokker Triplane in 1/48.

The kit was built largely out of the box with a few exceptions.  Starting with the cockpit, I painted the plywood portions using an undercoat of Tamiya panzer yellow with Winsor Newton raw umber brushed across it to replicate the wood grain.  I used the same technique on the propeller while I was at it.  I replaced the kit Spandau machineguns with a pair of spectacular etched and turned brass guns from Master Model in Poland.  Actually I used two pairs, because with the first pair I thought that paint would obscure some of the beautiful detail so I tried giving the parts a dip in Blacken It chemical blackener.  Basically, it just ate the parts up and destroyed them.  The second pair I just airbrushed them with Alclad gunmetal and called it even.

With the fuselage together, I scraped off the plastic strip that Eduard uses to replicate the lacing under the fuselage, filled the seams and used Future to attach etched lacing from Eduard before I painted the airframe with Gunze Mr. Color.  I replaced the kit rotary engine with a resin Oberusel from Vector that had much finer detail, particularly on the cylinder heads.  I also used some aftermarket resin wheels to round it off. 

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I had an older Superscale sheet of Triplane aces that featured Jacobs 450/17 with the winged devil, so I used those decals.  In hindsight, the sheet was designed for another kit (probably the DML kit) so some of the white crosses didn’t fit as well as they should which from certain angles makes the kit alignment seem off.  I probably would have done better to mask and paint the crosses myself. 

Still and all, I was very happy with the result.  I’m already thinking about my next WWI build.

Text and Images Copyright © 2012 by Cameron Lynch
Page Created 28 September, 2012
Last Updated 28 September, 2012

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