The Vickers E.S.1 (Bullet) was tiny but its almost circular fuselage and somewhat rounded shape gave it exceptional speed due to the lack of drag. This along with its manoeuvrability should have been enough to regard it as an exceptional fighter however the war in the air over the Western Front was changing. As the war progressed it became more commonplace for there to be dogfights involving numerous aircraft all at the same time. The pilot’s views of his surroundings were of paramount importance to the airmen in this theatre. Vickers improved their design with this in mind by fairing in the fuselage to flat sides behind the pilot to give him better downward and rear views but this still was not enough for the new F.B.19 (Bullet) and the aircraft was not liked. A dozen went off to serve in Mesopotamia, then a dumping ground for obsolete aircraft but even there they were not popular despite Vickers giving them staggered wings for even greater pilots’ vision. By 1917 all had been replaced by other aircraft on this front. A much bigger dumping ground for obsolete aircraft or in some cases planes that were to crap to even begin service on the W.F. was Russia. When the Vickers F.B.19 Bullet was demonstrated to the Russians they placed an order with Vickers and the Bullet went into production. Russian pilots’ opinion of the Bullet could not have been any more different to those of the British. The plane was loved by many who flew it for its speed and handling, they finally had an aircraft that could catch the German planes they hunted and considered the Bullet more than a match for their quarry. From 1917 skis were fitted experimentally on some Bullets. The aircraft went on to see action in the Russian Civil War and in the 1920’s served as a trainer in Russian Aviation schools.
Before the days of the internet the only 1/48 kits I could get were Smer offerings. This was of no issue at the time because there were no websites like this one to see how inaccurate and shoddily built my own efforts were compared to others. Since the internet and the AMS it inflicted on me the stash of Smer kits along with some completed models were banished to the attic. More recently I took out the Smer kits and saw that with a little TLC and tweeking some decent builds can be made of them, it must also be remembered that these cost peanuts so even if two or three are needed to build one plane that is still good value for money compared to Roden and Eduard offerings. I therefore began my Smer Bash. The first was a re vampted SE.5a but this was unfortunately knocked off the shelf at an advanced stage by my very elderly Father in Law who then accidently trod on it. The second attempt went much better when I converted an Avro 504K into a 504L and this is now one of my favourites in my collection. I was going to go thru a load more Smer builds but got distracted building Gasbags.
Here is what I plan to do here: I will use a Smer SE.5a (wings), a Smer Sopwith Camel (engine, cowling and rear fuselage) and Smer Avro 504K (decals). Struts, seat and various other bits will probably also come from the leftovers from these kits. The cowling is the correct width and depth but the opening is too large, there was however a Bullet that had the cowling modified to a larger opening so I will look into this rather than muck around with it too much. The rear of the camel behind the turtle deck from the flat sides down matches very closely to the Bullet so I will use this. The curved canopy above will be scratch built as will the rudder, stabiliser and rear wings. The area around the pilot will be a real challenge and I am not sure how I will do this. I could build up all the wooden runners with plastic card and skin it with 5 thou which will look the best but be as hard as hell or just carve out the shape using dense foam and heat mould plastic card around it using Harry Woodman’s method, I would then need to detail this inside and out. The front wings should be real easy as they match perfectly the SE.5a wings in chord but are considerably shorter meaning I just need to carve the ends to shape and add the ribs.
But hey this is just my plan, if any of you have any better suggestions I would be delighted to hear them. Half my plans tend to end in the world of balls up making me look for another plan and hope that works. This hobby would be really easy if I built the same thing each time, then I would only use plans that worked!
Thanks for looking in Alan.
