Yugoslavia's Vazduhoplovstvo
Vojno (Air Arm) used the Bristol Blenheim in light bombing duties during the
short war against Germany in the Spring of 1941, serving in the 1st and 8th
Bombing Regiments and the 11th Independent Group. Despite the bitter conditions
of the campaign and with some of them destroyed on the ground by the Luftwaffe,
the Blenheims and their crews carried on a valiant array of duties such as
bombing armour and infantry columns in almost a close support role and just a
few, very brave and dangerous raids against targets as far as Hungary, Austria
and the Bulgarian border from where the Germans launched their offensive.
The first
Blenheims to reach Yugoslavia were L160 and 161 (pattern machines numbers
8814 and 8815) in 1938. The first Ikarus built machine flew in March, 1939
followed by another 15 of the type. So Yugoslavia became the second
country to license produce the Blenheim, after Finland's State Aircraft
Factory. The British Royal Air Force transfered 20 Blenheims to the V.V.
from its stocks in early 1940.
At the time of
surrender, a total of 24 Blenheims were in various degrees of completion
at Ikarus plant located in the town of Zemun. Yugoslav partisans sabotaged
the production lines, thus preventing the use of the airframes by the
Germans. The few examples that survived the Blitz were transferred after
overhauling to the newly created Croatian Air Force, which used them for
anti-partisan duties.
MPM released their
Blenheim series some years ago and while you don't see them very often, they're
quite fun to build and a remarkable option to Airfix and Frog's respectfuly old
offerings. The one presented here is one of the options in MPM's nice decal
sheet, along a pre-war British and a 1942 Finnish examples. Specially the
Ksovsky Krist's (Cross of Kosovo, the Yugoslavian A.F insignia) is a lovely
rendition of the originial. The plastic is soft but very workable, the resin and
photoetched parts are first rate. If you build it from the box or beef it up,
you'll get an excellent rendition of this classic bomber one way or the other.
Click on
images below to see larger images
The only
additions were a seat for the gunner, a couple of levers in the cockpit
and the scratch-built Darne 7.92mm machine gun in the Bristol B.I turret.
This gun was sometimes used in the Blenheim but most commonly a Browning
FN was used. If you build it out of the box, you can take advantage of the
very fine Vickers K for the British and Finnish samples, but I would
recommend you to cut one of the Brownings in order to portray the
Yugoslavian or a late Finnish bombers.
Paints were
ModelMaster's RAF Dark Earth, RAF Stone and RLM 80 for the uppers and MM's RAF
Sky for the undersides. The RLM color was used for it gave me a better impresion
to the overall cammouflage than RAF Dark Green. Some weathering was given to the
plane such as oil stains and paint flaking with black washes and some Humbrol
191. You have to remember these planes were well mantained and kept clean until
the war broke out, so focus only on "operational areas" such as the
upperside of the fuselage, bomb bay and landing gears, leading edges, etc, etc.
Sorry for the
average quality of the pictures but they were taken with my cellphone“s cam.
I'll be "evolving" to a digital one anytime soon but they'll do it for
now.
And there you have
it, a Yugoslavian Blenheim... If MPM would just release the Mk.I again, with
decals for the other operators of this aircraft (Turkey, Romania, Croatia, etc.)
we'd certainly appreciate it!
Thanks go to Pablo
"Zeta" Ziegler for getting the kit for me, he was very happy when he
saw it finished and the great Srecko Bradic for maintaining his superb site http://www.letletlet-warplanes.com/
Trust me, if you like Yugoslav planes, but not only that, take a time and pay a
visit to it...
Cheers from Caseros,
Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Javier
Click on
images below to see larger images
|