When I first saw this pretty little aeroplane in French 5-colour camo with big odd-proportioned RFC roundels, (on the box of the Roden 1/72 kit), I knew I had to make the 1/32 Roden kit in this scheme.
The kit was picked up for a song (well 20GBP) at one of the Scottish National Model shows and sat collecting dust in the stash until I started to make a CSM Nie17. Perversely once I finished the cockpit of that kit I thought, that's fine, but what I really want to do is B6768! So out came the Roden kit and work began.
I'm a great fan of Roden kits and think the Albatros D.III as at least as good as the WNW D.V, in some aspects better, but Oh, the Nie presented many challenges that took me back to my scratch builiding and vacform days last millennium. The worst is probably the turtle decking on the rear fuselage. Mis-aligned halves and gaps had to be carefully filled and sanded to preserve the stringers and I didn't get the tailplane joint too well. The cabane struts aren't level and the lower wings do not line up with the fuselage or outer struts. However, head down and on we go. (You may spot the stupid mistake where I put the aileron cranks in backwards but the PVA glue was strong enough to dissuade me from trying to remove for fear of breaking something, so backwards they stay - a field modification!)
The only picture I've seen of B6768 shows only a Lewis gun on upper wing, however the plane was on muster with 1 Squadron RFC from Autumn 1917 until January 1918 flown by many pilots and other Nies in the Squadron had a variety of Vickers, Lewis or both mounted so I decided B6768 would at some stage have had the two-gun treatment. I liked the colours and didn't want to dirty it up too much so kept the weathering light, although I thought the pilot figure (Model Cellar) needed to look as if he'd spent a few hours in winter weather behind a castor-oil spewing engine, so he is a bit grimy. I thought Jimmy McCudden (from the Encore SE5a) would visit him for the photographer's visit - but unfortunately he only brought a camera on his phone - apologies for the poor quality of the record of this historic visit!
Sandy
