Corona Build 9

The Curtiss R3C-2 floatplane racer. Piloted by Jimmy Doolittle*, this aircraft won the Schneider Trophy race of 1925 in Chesapeake Bay in the United States, and shortly afterwards set a new world speed record of 245.7 mph. The Schneider Trophy doesn't resonate much these days, perhaps because since it was a competition for seaplanes, its reason to exist has largely vanished. In Britain it's well known at least to air enthusiasts not only because it was eventually won outright by Britain, in 1931, but because the winning plane is seen as the forebear of the Supermarine Spitfire which was so important to Britain in WWII, indeed it was designed by the same man, RJ Mitchell.

It has to be said, that the Schneider Trophy planes bore as much connection with ordinary working aircraft, as Formula One cars do to the car standing in front of your house. They truly were remarkable pieces of technology, and the effort put into their development undoubtedly fed into the military race to develop new aircraft before the Second World War. Crucially, after WWI, the competition was taken over by national governments and it became a matter of vital national prestige to win it. It had started just before the Great War, and most of the competitors then were French, reflecting the French domination of the world of aviation at the time. But after the War, the Schneider Trophy became a three-way affair between Britain, Italy and the United States. The requirement was to win it three times in a row. The US really should have won it on the next occasion after Doolittle's win in 1925, but missed a trick. If one is honest, it's the Italians who should have taken the prize, with their series of beautiful (I use the word avisedly) Macchi racers, culminating in the extraordinary M.C.72 which just failed to be ready in time for the 1931 race. The Supermarine S.6B's speed record was just over 400mph, a speed only routine for fighter planes in the last year of WWII; but the M.C.72 hit an amazing 440mph. An absolute speed record for any kind of plane. Remember these aircraft had to drag cumbersome floats around with them. The Supermarine and Macchi planes eventually boasted 2,000hp of engine power; apart from having twice their power, the difference with ordinary fighter planes was that these engines were really only good for the one race. Much like those of Formula One cars.

This is a white metal kit, unique in my stash and probably most other people's. Here's a picture of a late stage in the build. The part count is very small. Oh, and I had to scratch build a couple of things, like the windshield. Kitmakers are unlikely to venture into this medium in the forseeable future. It's hard to render satisfactory detail in it, and the various challenges involved in assembling a kit like this don't gain any special benefits. The weight alone made a finished result very 50/50. When you see the head-on view, just consider the problem of getting it all straight and level when the struts underneath are supposed to come together where they meet the fuselage. I had to cheat and put a little gap in there, to make it more stable. And it's tiny, measuring 9 cm across the wings. For reference, my previous aircraft kit, of the Morane Parasol, weighed 13 grammes. The Merlin Models Curtiss R3C-2 weighs 118 grammes. 

Originally, I picked this kit after seeing the original aircraft, hanging from the ceiling of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington. It was gorgeous in its yellow and brass and (as I thought) deep dark blue. I bought three cans of enamel paint soon after, with this kit in mind. They've been waiting an awful long time, and becoming a bit trickier to use. If you're wondering why its wings are covered in brass - those are the radiators. All the Schneider types had engines requiring humongous cooling systems. As for the blue, the lighting in the museum was deceptive and it seems the paint shade I saw may have been gloss black. But the plane has sported a succession of different paint jobs. A picture of it in 1925, Jimmy standing on one of the floats, appears to show it in a shade of mid-something, almost certainly blue.

The kit didn't come with decals, which I wouldn't have used anyway. But it also didn't come with a stand or any form of beaching trolley. I would have thought that kits of any flying boat or floatplane ought to come with something like that, to represent it as it would have been seen out of the water. I've made a crude little wooden stand for it. But I might look up an appropriate design of beaching trolley.

So. This was a difficult build. With the equivalent in plastic, you can find yourself shaving off flash and filing down misshapen areas and filling gaps. With this, some filling was needed. But it's also possible to bend white metal into shape to some extent. Unfortunately, it's even easier to go too far and then it's impossible to correct the bend. Some parts were very thickly formed, while others were supposed to be strong but were worryingly thin. Like the struts. Frankly, it's a miracle that it's now sitting right, to my satisfaction anyway.

You need to appreciate that this kit doesn't feature anything like locating pins/holes. You're using superglue, and whichever type you go for, there'll be the usual holding of breath and sphinctre tightening when you join any thing to any other thing. Especially when as with those struts the ends are knife-like edges. I shaved them a bit, and dug out some grooves, but;... as you wait, sweating, for the parts to hold, you do sort of resort to incantations and absurd promises to the god of your choice.

I wouldn't want you to look too closely at the pics, but if you did, you'd think the paint work was very globby. And it is. It's a while since I used enamel paint (as opposed to acrylic). And being so glossy, the lights weren't flattering when I used my camera. In the flesh, so to speak, you don't notice the globbiness so much. This was one time when a full glossy finish was entirely valid. And I love these colours, the brass and the dark blue in particular, which looks mysterious and different in every light. To my eyes it doesn't seem as green as it does in the pictures. 

Never mind. To my great surprise, I'm really pleased with the end result, which will sit on a Schneider themed shelf in the display cabinet. Just one thing: if anyone comes along one day and has cause to pick it up, gently pick it up by both floats, keep it level and move VERY CAREFULLY!

* - This is the same Jimmy Doolittle who led the 'Doolittle Raid' of the Second World War. It deserves to be celebrated: mind-bogglingly brave, it was the US's dramatic first response to Pearl Harbor, and involved taking off in B-25 bombers from an aircraft carrier (it's hard to exaggerate how extreme this idea was) the USS Hornet to bomb Tokyo. Militarily it was near-futile, but a vital boost to morale in the US, and a shocking demonstration to the Japanese that they weren't unreachable.