1:48 Mirage IIIE 13-QO 30 ans de la 13 Escadre EC1/13 Artois 1987

Thirty years of the escadre from Colmar

The thirteenth fighter escadre was among the units that built the modern French fighter force after the Second World War. Its re-establishment falls in the second half of the 1950s, and so in 1987 it was the turn of the thirtieth-anniversary celebration. One of the Mirage IIIE machines received a finish for the occasion of the kind then done by hand and only for a few weeks around the main events.

The aircraft is marked with the code 13-QO. The escadron 1/13 Artois, whose name figures in the designation, was one of the subordinate squadrons of that escadre and had a share in the finish. It is exactly here that the French custom of dividing festive finishes between a unit and its parent escadre can be seen, which leads to one base producing several different jubilee examples within a few seasons.

The letters after the dash were tied on French aircraft to the airframe, not to the crew. When a machine passed to another squadron it was given a new code, so a pair such as QO serves today as a guide to dating photographs and to whom an aircraft belonged in a given year. With jubilee examples it tends to be the only reliable trace.

Advice on the work

Before applying them it pays to check that the varnish under the decal has really dried. A fresh gloss softens from the water and the decal is printed into it crookedly, which can no longer be put right. Once dry it is good to go over the edges with a thinned varnish, so that the artwork merges with the surface.

The model otherwise stays a standard version of the Mirage IIIE; it is this sheet that gives it its festive character.