"Dear Mr. Stephen Lawson,

Greeting from sunny and very hot Kiev! With this message I inform you that a parcel with two new model kits. The 1:72 Nieuport 27 C.1 (# 061) & 1:48 DeHavilland DH 4 with RAF3 engine and will be sent to your address in several weeks. Please, let me know as soon as you receive it.
Sincerely,
Olga"


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If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!

Awesome! That is Sidney Cotton's DH4- I think this RAF engined version is the only variant Roden hasn't already covered? It's not my scale, and I already have the Pegasus 1/72 to build this aircraft, but it is great to see this scheme being used in a kit.

I was wondering whether anyone could shed light on Roden's choice of colours on the decals of the roundels for the wings of the DH4 on the box art? Why have they chosen to put the white on the outer circle?

See: http://modelingmadness.com/scotts/w1/roden/432.htm

I have a photo of this aircraft, and two of its twin, but none show the wing roundels clearly. If anyone could tell me what words (names?) on white backgrounds are in the decals for either side of the cockpit exterior, I would appreciate it very much.

Greetings Ben,
On the cockades, the white border was something that began showing up on British Aircraft after May 1917. It was after the adoption of the dark-colored PC10 and PC12 finishes, British overwing and fuselage roundels appeared with a thin white border to set them off from the background. Underwing roundels painted against CDL retained the unbordered form.

Hi Stephen, and thanks for your post, but I am referring to the wing roundels that Roden have done with wide white outer rings, blue, then red centre- i.e. they have swapped the blue and the white. Look closely at the scan of the decal sheet on modellingmadness- the outer white is hard to see against the backing paper.

The only thing that could suggest this is the non-standard order of the fin flash- white, blue then red. Sidney Cotton claimed he designed the camouflage, and he didn't have the highest respect for rules and bureaucracy, but I would have thought he would have followed the standard roundel pattern (as the photographic evidence shows he did on the fuselage ones).

Greetings Ben,

I have done a bit of searching on some comments made by Alex Imrie. It seems the upper surface wing cockades may have been "subdued". He noted the Sopwith Triplanes of Naval 10 had received orders to have PC (10 or 12) painted over the white of the middle ring.

As a guess on my part - the outer white ring on the DH 4 kit decals might be interpreting the original blue with the inner middle white ring getting a heavy coat of ultramarine to subdue it? The subdued outer ring could be in a similar lt blue as the camouflage? Is there anything in the Datafiles that covers this? Being stationed to patrol the seaway canal the blue might have been attempt to subdue the scheme even further?


". . .Many home defense machines, however, remained in their standard “day” PC10 finish. To tone down the appearance of the national markings, the white portions of the roundels and rudder stripes were often overpainted with PC10, black, red or blue. . ." (From comments on the National markings employed in WWI by Eric Goedkoop).

By the way - "The Kiel Canal (German: Nord-Ostsee-Kanal, NOK), known as the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Kanal (after Kaiser Wilhelm I), until 1948, is a 61-mile (98-kilometre) long canal in the German Bundesland Schleswig-Holstein that links the North Sea at Brunsbüttel to the Baltic Sea at Kiel-Holtenau. . ."

Also for those interested in famous Sidney Cotton, here is a bit of fun.

Interesting Stephen! Certainly gives a few more possibilities.

I thought I would post the only known (to me) photo of this aircraft: