On the other hand even the Tomahawk Mk 1 with its twin fifties and four 0.30 guns had better firepower than the Mk1 Spit or Hurricane with their eight 303s. Thus the Tomahawk would have been a better bomber destroyer than the two British fighters.
Colin

…Later Tomahawk Mk1s had six .303s instead of two .50s and four .303s, and Tomahawk IIAs all had this armament, making them less effective even that Spitfire Is and much less than the gun platform par excellence the Hurricane. I suspect given their poorer rate of turn they would have been in serious trouble.

Can’t say I’m too surprised – it’s a big, big aircraft and sadly was not a resounding success. Can’t help thinking the light blue would have been better off following the Navy’s lead and buying the Sea Vixen instead, which did the same job better.

That said, the Javelin deserves its place in the pantheon and would be an awesome airshow performer.

‘If it smokes, it’s one of ours’

Another thing he notes is the MiG’s tracer ammo, which gave a good warning.

…Almost as much warning as the amount of smoke thrown out by the F-86’s engine? Target acquisition must have been a doddle. Apparently the saying went ‘if it smokes, it’s one of ours’

It sounds to me like the F-86 was improved at a faster rate than the MiG15 – bear in mind that the F-86A had non-powered controls which made the aircraft physically difficult to fly. By the sounds of things the E model was much improved and probably a clear advantage over the MiG.

I’m interested to hear comments about the veracity of F-86 claims, being measured against well-kept records. However, this surprises me as what I have read about claims in the latter part of the second world war suggests that US pilots were claiming something like 4-5 times more aircraft than they were actually shooting down, (British reports were about right and Germans tended to underestimate claims) and official reports were also understating losses. This may have changed by Korea, but I’d be interested to see what the reasons for this were.

I’d also be interested to see how many victory claims were ‘blue on blue’.

Try http://www.thunder-and-lightnings.co.uk for more info on the Sea Hawk and other users. There’s a great story about an Indian Sea Hawk pilot who crashed into the sea shortly after take off, and calmly waited for the aircraft carrier to pass over his head before ejecting. Some nerve!

Thanks for that. I would probably use the kit roundels/flashes since I’m not going for a “competition entry” model, just one for my own collection.

I think our work has a laser printer – I could see what the results are like with that.

OK, personal message me with your email address and I’ll send you over the files. It would help if you had a lot of models to do as the decal sheets aren’t cheap. Let me know if it’s a colour laser printer and I’ll send the codes over too. In fact, if you were able to print my codes for me, I’ll send you a couple of sheets of the Galaxy Models (very good quality) decal sheet, do your own and send me the rest back… Let me know what you think.

I’m also doing a model of MH434 at some point and have been producing my own decals – I’ve had much more success with serials and so on than roundels, so if you were able to do the roundels I should be able to run off a set of serials for you. This is 1/72 by the way. Nose art might also be possible depending on the colours.

Your other option would be ModelDecal lettering sheets (which are very fiddly, I don’t like them myself) or masking and painting onto clear decal sheet. If you had access to a good colour laser printer I could send you the files and you could print them yourself on clear decal sheet.

For an example of the decals I’ve done see the thread on my Shackleton in progress, though these are early examples and the definition is better now.