No, the title is not a hostile reference to a very different sky blue entity ie. Manchester City which won the European Champions League a few days ago. This is a 1:72 scale model of a Gotha G.V bomber of the Great War 1914-18. Its sky blue colour scheme shows that it was conducting one of the last daylight bombing raids against the U.K. in December 1917. Britain's air defences were becoming increasingly effective and the Gothas and Giants would soon be flying over London by night.
Until the last day or so I wouldn't have bet on getting this far, since the kit was inflicting its own nightmare on me courtesy of its extremely challenging wing assembly. I did anticipate some of it hence I was always going to make this a 'simple' build, just generic colours and no decals or rigging. That last aspect is what put me off a more ambitious level of build: I could see from the large number of parts involved in the wing assembly, and the vagueness of location points and strut dimensions, that the final wing geometry was unpredictable. Honestly, I'm amazed that it came together as it did. But if you check it against plans, you'll see some back stagger which shouldn't really be there, and other little examples of misalignment.
But it does look like a Gotha G.V, so I call it a win. This one's just for my amusement, to place next to some WWI German fighter types. Of course the Gothas were by no means Germany's largest aircraft of WWI (clue in that reference to Giants), but they were big enough for this to provide a nice visual contrast with the tiny Fokker Triplane and the rest.
The main Gotha series (the G.I was something of a bizarre aberration, while the GL.VII and onwards were very different designs) - G.II, G.III, G.IV, G.V, G.Va and Vb - didn't represent any particular advance in technology. But they did demonstrate the achievement of building a reasonably reliable and efficient plane capable of taking a modest bomb load over some distance and dropping it. Previously the Germans could only manage strategic raids against the U.K. with Zeppelins. They couldn't drop bombs with any accuracy, but they didn't really need to; their underlying purpose was to force the British to redirect a major portion of their resources - aircraft, anti aircraft guns and associated manpower - back to the homeland. Unfortunately the Germans in their turn were forced to switch to night raids and this was harder. It forced unwelcome changes on the aircraft too: the G.Va and Vb featured extra shock absorbing undercarriage frames, in an attempt to ameliorate the difficulties of landing at night.
Another innovation in the V series was the podding of the engines in between the wings. Previously the engines sat in large 'cabinets' sitting on the lower wings. This makes for a more difficult model to build, because what we're now trying to do is arrange a more complicated set of pieces and struts - some very small and fiddly, getting them to set evenly and with each other, and also at the same height as all the other struts. Between wings which have both dihedral and sweep back. I'm laying this on a bit thick, but believe me, I was grateful that I've faced this sort of thing before. And, fantastic that it was that Roden produced the four kits which cover the Gotha series, they were some of Roden's earlier efforts, and you can see ways in which it could have been made much more buildable. Most urgently, I'd have moulded the four front struts and the four rear struts in each engine assembly as single pieces, to insert inside the pods.
Having said all that, no other medium/large model firm has produced a kit of the Gotha in 1:72, and only single and out of production kits are available in 1:48 and 1:32. Sad, because if someone has heard of any WWI bomber at all, it's probably the Gotha. I've no immediate plan to build another one, but I did have an idea of building the G.II model. Which would have the benefit of possessing a somewhat simpler engine assembly. The downside would be the long build time - I'd want to rig it as well.
What else... Notice that slot behind the rear gun position? Maybe I should have taken a picture of the underside to show this: it was to enable the gunner to fire directly down and to the rear of the plane, ie. into the plane's blind spot. Via a substantial 'tunnel' filling the rear fuselage. A clever solution, but it might not have been worthwhile in the light of experience, because no one else adopted the same feature, instead, usually providing a firing position on the underside of the fuselage. For instance, as found in Britain's Handley Page bombers.
So, there it is. Quite demanding, for a 'simple build'. If anyone else was having a go at one of these kits, I wish I could give useful advice about the centre section and engine assembly struts. At least do the obvious: carefully cut away the pieces WITHOUT snapping any of them (yes, I did that twice), lay them out in a well organised manner, and work in a well lit environment... sigh. For what it's worth, I delayed fitting the outer lower wing sections, and their associated struts, until I'd done the centre section and top wing, and I think that made the build much easier. But the end result, for me anyway, is pleasing for what it is. And I do like the pale blue colour scheme. Sorry that the subtlety of the sky blue I mixed up doesn't really show up in these pics. You'll just have to trust me!
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