ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF FLIGHT -
ONE OPINIONATED WRITER’S LIST OF SIGNIFICANT AIRCRAFT (THAT YOU CAN MODEL ) 

Article and all models by: Tom Cleaver

      Thirty-four-and-a-half years ago, on the evening of July 20, 1969, I sat in my in-laws’ living room and watched an event I had been waiting for since I first read a Heinlein novel.  The picture on screen was primitive, black-and-white, not even up to the level of a Kinescope, yet it was recording one of the most important events in human history.  I looked over at my Grandmother-in-Law, who was 76.  As we watched Neil Armstrong take “one small step for a man - one giant leap for mankind,” what she remembered was reading the first news of the Wright Brothers’ flight as a girl of 10. Consider: within the lifetime of a single human being, we had gone from our first tentative step off the ground to our first tentative step off the planet, events separated by only 65 and a half years.  Never in six thousand years of recorded history has time moved so quickly. A Roman from the time of Caesar Augustus could have made sense of the world my grandmother-in-law was born into; the world we sat in that night 66 years later would have been completely unintelligible to that same Roman.

      One hundred years ago today, December 17, 1903, a fragile, ungainly machine piloted by Orville Wright flew a distance of 120 feet, remaining aloft with full control about all three axes of flight (which is why the Wrights are the fathers of flight) for a total of 12 seconds.  Over the course of the day they took turns as pilot for short hops, with the last - at 852 feet in 59 seconds - the longest.  Shortly after the fourth landing, a gust of wind caught the flimsy craft and flipped it over; the crank case shattered and the engine jerked loose.  The active career of the 1903 Flyer had come to an end with less than two minutes of flight time. Humanity would never be the same.  In that time, the wing joined the sail and wheel as a prime mover of people and things. Within a lifetime, the new invention would change the way we think and act, work and play, the very way we live on the earth and view ourselves as humans.

      December 17, 1903, is a date that is as profound to human history as the unknown date the first human lit a controlled fire.

      While the Wrights recognized the significance of what they had done, the actual experience was not as thrilling as they had dreamed it would be.  And they did not foresee what their invention would become.  In 1909, Wilbur ruled out the possibility of transatlantic flight and dismissed the thought of airplanes hauling cargo. A year later, Orville told a reporter that the airplane would never take the place of trains or steamships for the carrying of passengers. Today, all of those events are so commonplace we pay no attention to them.

      While the Wrights had hoped that aviation would bring the world, it is unfortunately true that the mainspring of aeronautical development has been found in wars and the threat of wars.  When the specification for an airplane requires the maximum performance possible at the time of the design, this advances the state of the art.  The jet engine and the 35-degree swept wing which have made worldwide air transport possible came as the result of research to create warplanes; the first large swept-wing multi-engine jet was a bomber - the B-47.  So it has been through the past 89 years of this century of flight.

      With those thoughts in mind, and having gone through a collection of 300 models, here is a list of airplanes from the first half of this century of flight, that I as an aviation historian think are significant, and why I think they are.  My standard for including them is that the particular type advanced the state of aeronautics with its existence. For modelers, these are significant airplanes for which a good kit exists in 1/48 (my scale of choice), that you can build a good model from.

      Thus, for instance, the Bf-109 - which was a good lesson in what not to do aeronautically (wings, landing gear, aileron balance, rudder trim) and wasn’t capable of further effective improvement past the middle of its development cycle, won’t be found here, while the Spitfire - which had the highest limiting Mach number of any piston-engine fighter and was technologically significant, as well as being capable of effective development to the end of its line - will be.

      I will agree with anyone who questions the fact that the DC-3, B-17 or the B-29 are found on this list; the reason is, they’re not in my collection right now (though I have built all three) - my big models tend to quickly fly out to Planes of Fame, where there’s room and the visitors like big models.  With regard to more modern aircraft developed after 1953, I plead guilty that many of them simply don’t interest me as a modeler, though I agree many of them deserve to be on the list.

 As is always the case with lists like this, “your mileage may vary.”

 TC’S LIST OF SIGNIFICANT AIRPLANES OF THE FIRST HALF OF THE CENTURY OF FLIGHT:

     The first important military use of the airplane was to put an observer high enough to see what was going on “on the other side of the hill.” This was shortly followed by the ability to drop explosives on the other side of that hill. The first airplane designed for observation and bombing that was not completely at the mercy of the defensive forces of the other side was the deHavilland D.H.4.  The first light bomber/reconnaissance type that could depend on speed as its first line of defense, the D.H.4 presaged such later designs as the Mosquito, the Boeing B-47, and the contemporary Panavia Tornado.  Built during the First World War in large numbers, the American version of the D.H.4 became one of the prime workhorses in the development of early commercial aviation in North America.

      The best kit available of the D.H.4 is that from Blue Max, which was released earlier this year.  The kit is accurate, and - for both a World War I model and a product from this limited-run company - it is comparatively speaking easy to build.

      Once aircraft were used offensively to see over the hill, it became important to deny that capability to an opponent, which led to the development of the single-seat scout, later called the fighter.  The first “modern” fighter was the Albatros series.  The airplane introduced a high-powered engine, and twin machine gun armament; all other fighters until the monoplane revolution just before the Second World War would differ from the Albatros only in detail. The Albatros was so good that it completely turned around the fortunes of the German Air Service following its introduction, and maintained that position until development fatally flawed the series wit the D.V.

      A complete line of the Albatros fighters - the D.I/II, the D.III, the D.V/D.Va and the W.4 seaplane - are available in 1/48 scale from Eduard and are among the best kits released by that company.

      The best airplane to emerge from the war in terms of technological development was the Fokker D.VII, which utilized internally-braced wings and a metal fuselage frame rather than the externally-braced system of wood that all other aircraft of the period used.  While the D.VII had little effect on further military aircraft development, Anthony Fokker would use the information obtained from the D.VII after the war to create aircraft that significantly advanced commercial aviation around the world until one of them ended up in pieces in Stewart Baker’s wheat field near Bazar, Kansas, on March 31, 1931, with the legendary Notre Dame football coach, Knute Rockne, among the dead.

      Right now, the best Fokker D.VII in 1/48 is the new release from Roden. While not easy to build, it results in an accurate model of this famous airplane.  Also good if you can find it without having to pay kit collectors’ prices is the D.VII by DML.

      Aviation went through a technological revolution in mid-1930s and the period leading up to the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, and then in the years following during the first half of the war.  Nowhere was this more apparent than in the development of single-engine, single-seat fighters.  The three best of this period were the Spitfire, the Focke-Wulf Fw-190, and the P-51 Mustang.

      While the revolution sparked by the Albatros D.I lasted 20 years, that sparked by the monoplanes that appeared after 1935 would last less than a decade, such was the pace of technological change by then.

      Of the fighters designed before the war, the Spitfire - the product of ten years of cutting-edge technical development of the Schneider Cup Trophy racers - was the most advanced.  Its thin wing gave it the highest limiting Mach number of any piston-engine airplane used during the war.  It was supremely capable of further development.  The Spitfire 24, last of the line, had two-and-a-half times the power of the original, was over 100 m.p.h. faster, and carried an armament that was three times as heavy as the original.  The Spitfire was in the first rank of its technical contemporaries at the beginning and at the end. This cannot be said of any of the other fighters developed in the period.

      Through various companies, a modeler can now include in their collection one each of every significant version of the Spitfire; with aftermarket sets and decals, it is even possible to include the lesser-known sub-types.  The Merlin-60 series of Spitfires from ICM, while challenging, result in excellent models after the investment of some effort.

      The Fw-190 was so good, it transformed air warfare upon its introduction to combat in a way not seen since the introduction of the Albatros D.II over the Somme Front in 1916.  It allowed the Germans to maintain air superiority over northwestern Europe until they were overwhelmed by sheer numbers.  The airplane was so good that it influenced its design competitors immediately - the Hawker Tempest series and the Grumman Bearcat (designed after Robert Hall flew an Fw-190) are both variations on the theme first introduced by Kurt Tank.

      I will mention here the DML series of Fw-190s that allow the modeler to make almost all the major sub-types from the Fw-190A-4 to the Ta-152H.  The kits can be as challenging as an ICM Spitfire to build right, but the results will be outstanding. 

     While a fighter is in its essence a defensive weapon, it became crucial during the war to be able to project the defensive capabilities of the fighter over strategic distances, so that it could overwhelm the enemy’s fighter defenses.  The P-51 Mustang was the airplane that was able to do this.  In its Merlin-powered versions, the airplane combined the best aero engine of its generation with the best airframe. It was the P-51 that literally made possible the liberation of Europe from the Nazis, as pilots flying Mustangs out of England broke the back of the Luftwaffe in the spring of 1944, allowing the Allies to invade Europe that June under conditions of air supremacy necessary for blitzkrieg warfare.

      The P-51 is best served of all with kits from Tamiya of the P-51B and P-51D that are among the best plastic kits ever made, period.

      Naval warfare has seen the development of aircraft which are very different from their land-based contemporaries.  Because of the weight penalties incurred from having to build an airframe capable of withstanding the shock of landing on and taking off of a ship at sea, naval aircraft were deemed through most of their early development to always be at a disadvantage over their land-based opponents. Two aircraft changed that forever.

      The Mitsubishi Zero, which entered service in 1940, was the first carrier-based fighter that was at least the equal of if not superior to its opponents. Unfortunately for the Zero, this capability was obtained at the cost of creating an airframe without a lot of “stretch” for further development, and within a year of its introduction to combat the Zero was bested by its opponents. 

     Hasegawa “owns” the Zero in 1/48, with excellent kits of every sub-type of this fighter.  The kits are accurate and easy to build, with excellent results.

      The Zero was bested by the first carrier fighter to be superior than its land-based opponents, the Chance-Vought Corsair series, which became the fighter backbone of the US Navy and Marine Corps in the Pacific War, and went on to become one of the few aircraft of that period to fight in more than one war, flying on into the jet age when it was considered obsolete yet still gave sterling service in Korea. The Corsair established a tradition of carrier fighter superiority that was carried on through the F-8 Crusader, the F-4 Phantom and today’s F-14 Tomcat.

     Between Tamiya’s early series Corsairs, and Hasegawa’s late series U-birds, it is possible for a modeler to include in their collection every sub-type made of this important airplane.

      Technologically, the most significant airplane of the Second World War was the Messerschmitt Me-262, the first operational jet airplane.  Not only did it introduce the jet engine, but also the slatted swept wing - if you think that isn’t important, look out the window during landing the next time you fly from here to there in a jet airliner: you’ll see the wing of the Me-262 in operation.

      Both the DML and Tamiya Me-262 kits build up into equally-impressive models, with Tamiya’s getting the nod on “buildability.”

      The immediate result of the Me-262 was the North American F-86 Sabre, which would not have existed had the North American engineers with Operation Paperclip not obtained Messerschmitt’s paperwork on high speed aircraft development.  The extra 18 months it took the company to turn a first-generation jet design of modest performance into the best airplane of the second generation of jet aircraft would make all the difference in the world within two years of the first flight of their creation.  Not only did they demonstrate the correctness of Messerschmitt’s research, they also created what is likely the first supersonic airplane in the world if one gives credence to the many reports that North American test pilot George Welch exceeded Mach 1 in a dive on the first flight of the prototype, a full two weeks before Yeager flew the Bell X-1 into the record books.  The F-86 went on to establish a war record the equal of its progenitor, the P-51, in its ability to project fighter power over useful distances, and to serve with air forces around the world.

      Both Hasegawa and Academy have produced good kits of the definitive F-86 day fighter, the F-86F.  Using aftermarket sets, it is possible to create the F-86A and F-86E; I hope we will see the first Sabres in kit form in the near future. ProModeler has released an excellent kit of the most-produced single version of the Sabre, the F-86D all-weather interceptor.

      In conclusion, while many aircraft are designed and produced, few are truly influential, changing the course of later development as a result of their existence. Without the existence of these types developed during the first half-century of flight, aviation would have been far different than it has turned out to be today.

Editors Note: Normally I don't like to use thumbnails in an article, but without using them, I'd not have been able to include all the images in this article.