Beyond The Sprues
Current and Finished Projects => Physical Models => Aero-space => Topic started by: pigflyer on July 02, 2018, 03:39:11 AM
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Impressed by the Henschel 123, IMAM decided to emulate it. Three 7.7mm guns and a tidy bomb load, with good all round performance, made it worthy of production.
It was unfortunate that no testing was done in certain conditions. On arrival in Ethiopia, the two units flying the 42 found that the dust got into the undercart workings and caused lot of trouble.
Of the 47 aircraft in country, 15 were lost due to the wheels not fully lowering, and three when it got stuck part way up after take off.
The remaining planes plus 18 still in Italy were later passed on the Iraq, By the time of the Rashid Ali uprising and attack on R.A.F. Habbiniya,
there were 34 remaining aircraft. Before they could be used in anger however, R.A.F. Wellingtons bombed the base and scored hits on the two hangers the RO42s were kept, and those not fully burned out were still write offs.
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The Italians were keen on a rear gunner for ground attack aircraft at the time, but this did no harm to the performance at all. If not for a lack of
experience with retractable undercarriage, the RO42 could have fearured in WW11.
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I like this one very much!
You have a keen eye re-purposing this bird as an IMAM Ro and my hat's off to your for such outside-the-box thinking!
I like the look of that rear gunner and the tricolor on the tail, rumors of my Italian heritage notwithstanding.
Most excellent!
Brian da Basher
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The RO42 looks very nice - what were the donor kits? 1/72?
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Thanks guys, doner kits were, Heller sbc4 Helldiver and KP Letov S.231. Both in 1/72. Guess what my next Whiff is made from?
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Like it when you can take 2 plus kits, put them in an blender and come with neat looking WHIF and a smoothie to boot.
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I thought I saw a Helldiver in that kit bash :)
Nice combination of parts to create something different.