1:72 Gotha G.IV

The bomber of the first raids on London

The Gotha G.IV entered history as the machine with which long-range raids on British cities began. A pair of engines in nacelles between the lifting surfaces drove pusher propellers, and a biplane with a span of over twenty meters could carry a bomb load across the sea and return. The designers gave it an unusual defensive feature, the so-called tunnel: a slanting channel in the rear part of the fuselage through which the gunner could fire downward and rearward, that is into the space that tends to be the most vulnerable on large aircraft. The crew was made up of three men and their task was navigating over the sea without landmarks, which placed demands on navigation comparable to the fighting itself.

Six machines on one sheet

The subjects are carried by works numbers of the sixteen series and their markings differ markedly from one another. One of the machines had a snake painted on the fuselage, another carried black and yellow stripes on the sides, and on two more the number is completed by letter suffixes of the kind used with this type to tell individual examples apart within a squadron. Six on one package is generous for a collector, because each variant represents a different combination of national insignia and personal markings. A model with a sheet conceived this way is rewarding as a whole for a display case too, because the large areas of a biplane let the markings stand out.

The base and working it

All six subjects had an overall light blue-gray finish, which is untypical for a biplane of the day and gives a model an unmistakable look. On a smooth fabric-covered area the decals settle easily, but care is needed at the ribbed places of the wing, where the film needs a softener and patience. We recommend working through the individual symbols in turn and letting each of them dry before the next comes to it.