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French Aircraft Gallery by Laurent Beauvais
Here are some examples of non-French aircrafts wearing French colors. I hope that one day Tamiya or Hasegawa will realize some important French types including SMB2, Mirage III , Mirage F1.
Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat Aéronavale Française, Flotille 11F, SM Robert, Cat Baï, Indochine, 26 Avril 1954. Hasegawa 1/48 scale. This is one of the numerous Grumann cats used in the French Air Force. Hasegawa's standard is always great. We have a special issue of this kit with French decals.
North American T-6G Cognac Aout 1963 Occidental 1/48 scale - the first Occidental kit. You might have doubts about the quality of a new company's first kit, but Ocidental has performed a wonderful model. The standard is slightly below the Japanese companies, but largely ahead our French Heller. Decoration is colourful, making a nice change from all those faded schemes. The markings were made from scratch and with different decals (n°74 is easy to realize).
Republic F-84G Armée de l'Air, EC 1/3 Navarre, 1953. Tamiya 1/48 scale. A very insteresting paint scheme comprising of French markings over US arctic colors. No decal set exists for this aircraft, but this decoration is easy to recreate. The aircraft known as being used by the French Acrobatic Patrol (Patrouille de France). ref: Air Fan n°183, 1994.
AD 4 Skyraider E.C. 2/20 Ouarnesis, Algérie 1960. Tamiya 1/48. The enormous Skyraider AD4, AD4N and AD4NA were used by the French Air Force. Unfortunately these aircraft had quite a simple natural metal finish. The wing folding system has been built from scratch. It is not a very complicated and although these aircraft were not used on cariers, there are documents showing aircrafts in such a configuration.
F8F-1B Bearcat GC 1/22 Saintonge, Indochine. Hobbycraft 1/48. The Bearcat is certainly my preferred cat fighter. French Bercats were particularely dirty, which is something I like to represent. The Hobbycraft kit is good and very pleasant to build.
Mosquito FB VI Esc. Normandie Niemen, Indochine. Tamiya 1/48. After a short period operating the Fw190, which the French pilots of the "nen neu" (Normandie Niemen) did not appreciate for obvious reasons, the wonderful Mosquito was used. It seems that this aircraft did not appreciate the Asiatic weather. Due to the very high standard of this Tamiya kit, you can spend plenty of time to paint a nice finish. I did hesitate with another one with shark mouth, but this one was more easy to paint as I had no decal set, but one exists now. Models, Text and Images Copyright © 2001 by Laurent
Beauvais
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