1:35 Werner Voss Posing With A Motorcycle

The boy from Krefeld who flew differently from the rest

Werner Voss was born on 13 April 1897 into the family of a cloth dyer and worked his way into the air service by a detour through a hussar regiment. In under a year of combat duty he shot down forty-eight machines and in July 1917 took command of Jasta 10. He died on 23 September of the same year, barely five months after his twentieth birthday, over Poelkapelle: alone in a Fokker triplane he held out for more than ten minutes against seven British S.E.5a fighters and left hits on almost all of them. His opponents later wrote of that fight with undisguised admiration.

Why beside a motorcycle

He had a feeling for machines long before he flew. At home he was always busy around engines, and at the front he kept a reputation as a man who could mend anything with a cylinder and a crankshaft. Period photographs catch him beside a motorcycle, with his goggles pushed up on his forehead and his coat unbuttoned. The casting works with exactly that attitude: relaxed shoulders, one hand on the handlebar, the weight shifted onto one leg.

Where the figure belongs

It shows to best effect in an airfield scene, where machines stand and people move around them. It carries a story by itself, so a plain base and a patch of trodden grass are enough for it. The face and the unbuttoned coat are the places where it pays to work with thin coats of paint.

Rinse the resin parts in lukewarm water with detergent before painting, so that the mold release agent from the mold disappears. Cyanoacrylate glue or two-part epoxy will hold the joints, because cement meant for polystyrene will not bond this material. The machine the figure stands beside is a separate item.