1:48 de Havilland DH-82b Tiger Moth Queen Bee Part-3

A biplane with no pilot in the cockpit

In the 1930s British anti-aircraft artillery needed a target that behaves like a real aircraft and does not cost a human life. The answer came from converting the well-known trainer biplane: a wooden fuselage, radio control instead of a crew and the option of putting the machine on floats so that it could land on water and be used again. The targets were launched from a catapult as well as under their own power and spent over ten years in service, with some of them surviving the whole war.

Four markings, four different fates

Described in the greatest detail is a machine from 1940 and 1941 from the St Athan base, with silver undersurfaces and floats, an upper brown and green camouflage, black codes and markedly red upper wing tips. The second aircraft served with an anti-aircraft training unit in 1940. The third is the curiosity of the sheet: the only one of the Norwegian license-built examples to receive floats, it flew until the German invasion of 1940 and wore a dark green finish with a black engine cowling. The last option captures a naval machine as late as 1976.

Building and gluing

With a biplane there is only one order that makes sense: first the paint, then the decals, then the clear coat and only at the very end the rigging between the wings. Anyone who strings the wires earlier will reach the upper surface with neither a brush nor a finger and will no longer get the markings onto it. The red wing tips of the first marking are worth masking and spraying separately, because paint comes out more saturated than a thin film.