Aeroplane In A Bottle --- Finished This Morning (Pictures)

The Magistrate

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Mon Oct-16-06 10:11 PM
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Aeroplane In A Bottle --- Finished This Morning (Pictures)

Some of you may know of my arcane hobby of building small models of old aircaft, and as I chanced to finish this one off this morning, I thought I would put up something to celebrate. This one is not built from scratch like most of mine, but is an assembled kit, with a bit of extra work in detail. The scale is six feet to the inch (1/72), and the wing-span of the model is about six inches. It is a Nieuport-Delange Ni-D 52, flown by the Loyalist pilot in the opening stages of the Spanish Civil War.

The Nieuport-Delange Ni-D52 was one of several designs derived from the Ni-D42, which first flew in 1925 as a parasol monoplane. This design had excellent speed and climb, but serious aerodynamic flaws that necessitated extensive re-design, including addition of a diminutive lower wing. In 1927, an example of the re-designed Ni-D42 won a competition the government of Gen. Primo de la Riviera in Spain held to choose a new fighter for the Spanish air service. The Spanish government decided to purchase the "metallized" version of the machine, the Ni-D52, which replaced most of the wooden elements of the original design's structure with duraluminum. A contract was signed for 125 of the machines to be built on license in Spain by the Hispano-Suiza company, with the first thirty-four assembled from kits provided by the parent company in France, and the rest fabricated wholly in Spain. Production was slow to start, with the first machines only reaching service in 1931, after the fall of the monarchy and establishment of the Spanish Republic.

Spanish fighter pilots welcomed the "Hispano Nieuport" initially as a great advance on the 1919 vintage aeroplanes it replaced, but quickly grew disenchanted. The speed of production machines fell far short of the manufacturer's claimed 165 mph, and worse, the redesign had not wholly cured the aerodynamic flaws of the original: the machine responded poorly to its controls, had a tendency to spin out of tight turns, and was unstable at low speeds, which made take-offs and landings perilous, with roughly one machine per month being written off due to crash damage over the type's peace-time service life. In 1935, the rightist CEDA Bloc government began exploring replacements for the Hispano Nieuport, but collapsed in scandal before any decisions had been made, and in the political chaos following the election of a Left government in early 1936, no further action for replacement was undertaken. When the rightist coup attempted in mid-July collapsed into civil war, these machines remained the standard Spanish fighter plane, though no more than fifty-eight were still in service, and eighteen of these were undergoing repairs. As the Spanish air service largely remained loyal to the government, most of these were in the hands of the Left, at Madrid and Barcelona. They were used mostly on ground attack and escort missions over the early battles, though not to any great effect. The accident rate on active service was worse than in peace-time, and by September, much superior fighters had been put at the Nationalists' disposal by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. The handful of Hispano Nieuports remaining were retired to training and coastal patrol duties, with aircraft and crews from the Soviet Union providing the chief combat elements of the Loyalist air forces. Several of the remaining Hispano Nieuports were briefly returned to combat in March of 1937, being used for strafing during the rout of Italian forces at Guadalajara.

I have modeled one of nine serviceable Hispano-Nieuports on the strength of 13th Group at Barcelona when fighting commenced there on July 18, as it would have appeared early the following August. It was flown by Sgt. Jose Cabre in support of the trades union and anarchist militias that advanced into Aragon from Barcelona, and were at that time fighting before Saragossa. On the 14th of August, Sgt. Cabre took off from Sarinera to intercept several Nationalist machines, and was shot down and killed, crashing near Tardienta. On the outbreak of the fighting, red bands were added to the normal peace-time roundels and rudder striping in the Republic's colors: on the fuselage these did not wholly obscure the tactical numbers, painted in black, of 13th Group. The four leaf clover on the fin was the unit insignia of the group.