I have built the aircraft of another famous ace.  In this image, RAF ace Johnny Baldwin, has rocketed the locomotive of a German military train somewhere in France after D-Day.  Johnny Baldwin was one of a handful of aces who achieved double-digit air victories in a Hawker Typhoon.  Baldwin flew a Typhoon 1B throughout the war and went on to fly F-86 Sabres in the Korean War where he was lost in action.

I was missing a Hawker Typhoon kit from my collection.  I snagged the 1:48 Monogram kit off e-Bay for a couple bucks and bought decals from Superscale for Johnny Baldwin's ride.  I've never painted invasion stripes on a model.  Here was my chance if I didn't mess it up.  I picked up the right paints and took my time building and painting the aircraft.  I think it paid off.

I had a vision of the Typhoon attacking a ground target (bridge, armor, train).  A guy who works with me at the college is a train collector. I bumped into him and told him about my project.  He said he'd let me borrow his classic HO scale German Military Train.  The train was very neat and I was careful snapping pics of it on the concrete patio one Sunday.  It also had a Leopold gun but I reasoned that it would've been
extremely rare and lucky to find a Leopold gun in the open for any allied pilot.

I used a 3D landscaping package to create the scenery and added the tracks from the model train kit.  I added the train and used Photoshop to add smoke and fire effects to the destroyed locomotive. 

The Typhoon kit came with rockets that were molded to the mounts.  For both angles I photographed of the Typhoon, I had to digitally remove the rockets (because they were stuck in the train) and replace the deleted areas with other wing textures.

FYI:  A colleague of mine had an Uncle that flew P-47's in WW2.  He was lost late in the war over the Channel.  His relatives were given his personal effects including gun camera footage from countless missions. There were quite a few sequences of trains being attacked.  With Typhoons and Thunderbolts prowling the countryside, I feel sorry for the poor souls who were responsible for crewing the enemy trains in the war.

My next project may be a Japanese Betty bomber who will unfortunately meet up with either Walsh's Birdcage Corsair or McGuire's Lightning.

For more "Aces in 1:48 Scale" see http://home1.gte.net/konman/index.html

Konley