Wingnut WIngs 1/32 Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5a by Leo Stevenson

Wingnut Wings' 1/32 scale
Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5a

by Leo Stevenson

S.E.5a

Airfix's 1/72 scale Hurricane Mk.I is available online from Squadron

Introduction

Compare and contrast this pugnacious and purposeful Pit-Bull Terrier of a fighter with its rival, the sleek and streamlined Albatros. This is the sort of thing that drives my fascination with World War 1 aviation - their variety, the huge personalities that these aircraft had compared with later aircraft. I will now discreetly creep behind a wall of sandbags as World War 2 modellers prepare to argue with me.

Anyway, whatever your preferences are, I hope you’ll agree with me that this wonderful aircraft seems to embody the very spirit of the time and the place. Its no-nonsense radiator, the stubby wings set at a jaunty angle, the bluff shape of the fuselage and the angular nature of its tail, all of these things speak of Big Ben, moustache wax, Old Holborn tobacco, plum and apple jam or even, by jingo, of Blighty itself.

Construction

This is the wonderful Wingnut Wings kit of the S.E.5a ‘Hisso’ in glorious 1/32 scale, a scale so suited to World War 1 aircraft. Am I starting to sound biased? Yes, ok, I am; I admit it. I don’t make models in any other scale (even ones representing later periods); my hands and my mind just feel at home with this scale, it just ‘says’ all I want to about whatever it is that I am depicting. Any smaller and the level of detail would be disappointing, any bigger and the model wouldn’t let me ‘say’ anything more. But that’s just me; feel free to differ.

I made this kit straight ‘out of the box’, with the only additions being a leather handle on the Lewis gun’s drum magazine, a Bowden cable to fire this gun, and the rigging and turnbuckles (‘British flat rigging line’ and EZ-line from Wingnut Wings, and other bits from Bob’s Buckles).

Painting and Markings

This aircraft represents a Vickers built S.E.5a flown by the 6th Training Squadron of the Australian Flying Corps (a branch of the Australian Army in WW1) in October 1918, and it is one of the five options that the kit offers. Allied aircraft were usually far more dull and uniformly coloured than their German counterparts in this war and so this aircraft is relatively colourful. I think my choice echoes what influences a lot of modellers out there.

Although Wingnut Wings’ decals are usually superb quality and they can float down into the recesses of all sorts of surface details and texture if the model is gloss-coated enough, in this case I didn’t trust them to cope with the chunky fuselage lacing or the sharp square edges of the rudder, so I masked and sprayed both the rudder and the red and white band around the fuselage. The red and white band has a kangaroo on it and, typically thoughtfully, Wingnut Wings offer two options for making this band – a wrap-around all-in-one decal and, for fusspots like me who prefer to mask and spray their own bands, a separate white kangaroo to be applied over a painted band. Cute. Nice.

I'm normally eager to weather and beat up my models so that they appear as they would have done in service, rather than look like the bland and pristine examples of the real thing we see in museums today. This model was a rare exception to that and, apart from the rusting exhausts, it has little weathering because I guessed that as a training aircraft it would have been maintained better than one that was on active and daily duty.

Conclusion

This is a relatively simple straightforward and joyful kit to build; a nice and relaxing antidote to the frustrations that life and work can present us with.

Finally, a question. The round wooden thing under my model in one of these photos is the centre section of a World War 1 propeller. It bears the stamped number ‘1565’, and the wood is a reddish wood that seems to be mahogany. I acquired this when I was at primary school in the 1960’s (it was that kind of school !). When I first owned it there were eight live rounds of ammunition jammed in the holes, which I prized these out. I have long since lost this ammunition, but I remember that they were fatter than standard .303” rounds, and they had large brown percussion caps. I was originally told that this object was the centre of a propeller from an S.E.5, can anyone out there tell me if this is true? I’ve been curious about this for years.

www.leostevenson.com www.leojubilee.co.uk

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