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kanyiko β Mustang 19
Published: 2012-09-13 18:54:13 +0000 UTC; Views: 932; Favourites: 22; Downloads: 23
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Description
Finally finished my seventh build of 2012: a 1/72 scale Airfix P-51D Mustang, in the colours of the IsraΓ«li Air Force during the Suez-Campaign.This Mustang is marked as "No.19" of 105 Sqdn, IAF, as it appeared during the first day of "Operation Kadesh" (October 29 1956), when it was used to cut telephone wires to distrupt Egyptian Army communications. The individual aircraft's role in the conflict was very short-lived, as "No.19" was lost near Sharm-El-Sheik on October 31st, when its pilot, Captain Elad Paz, was forced to belly-land it in the desert after being hit by Egyptian Anti-Aircraft Artillery. Captain Paz managed to evade capture by the Egyptian troops, crossing the Sinai desert by foot untill he reached Israeli lines some 32 hours after his crash.
I decided on giving it a very tired look, as IsraΓ«l's Mustangs were very much worn-out fighters by the time of the Suez Conflict: originally delivered to the USAAF during World War II, they had been acquired and flown by Sweden in the immediate post-War years, before being sold to Israel in the early 1950s. By the time of the Suez Crisis of 1956, they had been replaced in front-line service by the Gloster Meteor and Dassault Ouragan, but still served with some second-line units. Not long after the crisis, the surviving examples were retired.
Model: 1/72 scale Airfix A01004 "North American P-51D Mustang"
Kit inventory no. 948, acquired August 10th 2012.
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Comments: 27
Great work!
Looks very different than most of the Mustangs you see and the painting and weathering is very well done!
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Thanks for the kind words!! ^_^
It's indeed something different from the normal WWII Mustang, isn't it? 
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Thank you very much for the kind words!!
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Neato. I grew up with so much of a politicized view of the Suez Campaign - for better and worse - that it's rare to have any discussion of *what actually happened*. And it's a beautiful model.
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Well, the story you get to hear always depends on which side of the conflict you are. The Suez crisis is a particularly complicated example, especially given the different layers of deception that went on.
And thanks! Actually, this one gave me a taste of 'unusual Mustangs' - I'm still working on the stock kit (P-51D "Tuskegee Airmen" 1944), but I've already started on another unusual little Mustang (Indonesian Air Force/AURI during "Operation Haik", 1958).
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That's fascinating! Obviously I'd never heard of it before (as with many things that might portray the USA's interference in other countries, in any way other than completely positive). History with P51s is always more awesome!
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There are quite a few models that could be done of covert US ops - Mustangs in Indonesia; Invaders over Indonesia, Cuba, Vietnam and Laos; Trojans over Laos, Vietnam and Congo; Counter Invaders over Congo, etc...
At least they'd be a whole lot more interesting in colour schemes than yet another "Light Ghost Grey" MQ-9... <.< (Got that one in my "future stash" - reserved bot not yet picked up at my Local Model Store)
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even as shitty as the political situtian there is, impressive feat from that pilot!
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Sometimes there's nothing to it than to pack your things and start walking, when you're in a situation like this. If you're lucky you'll end up as Captain Paz, otherwise you'll end up like Sergant Dennis Copping: he crashed his P-40 in the North-African desert on June 28th 1942, packed his rations and started walking... and they only found the wreck of his plane earlier this year. He's still missing, but there's no chance he survived longer than a day or two, as he was over 300 km from the closest settlement, with maybe a liter or so of water, and day temperatures in the high thirties...
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i hope he had a gun to shoot himself with.
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It's unlikely he'd have been in any state to do so, by the time he truly realised how deep in the sh... he was.
He's not the only one to have met that fate, by the way: the most famous case is that of Lady Be Good, a B-24D bomber that got hopelessly lost on April 4th 1943 on its return to its base in North-Africa, accidentally overflying the base in thick clouds and total darkness, and continuing on its trail until it ran out of fuel. The crew jumped, thinking they were over the Mediterranean, only to find much to their surprise that they had landed in the middle of the desert. One of the "survivors" kept a diary which showed that the eight survivors (a ninth got 'lucky' when his chute failed to open - he died on impact) trekked north, not knowing they were 710 km from the coast; they lasted 8 days on just one canteen of water shared between them, before they died. The wreckage of their bomber was found in 1959, and a subsequent expedition found eight of the nine crew: one where he had fallen close to the wreck after his chute failed; five as a group some 130 km north of the crash; a seventh 32 km to the north of the group, and an eight 11 km further north. The ninth crew member was never found. All turned out to have died of exhaustion and dehydration (except for the one killed on impact)
Ironically, the crew had made one colossal and fatal mistake: they had decided to go north, thinking they were much closer to the coastline than they actually were. If instead they had gone south, they would have encountered the wreck of their bomber, which had crashlanded almost intact, and which at the time of the find in 1959 still contained the radio set which surprisingly was still in a working order (and which they could have used to call for help), as well as litres of water and rations on which they could have survived for several days. Poor sods... :/
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poor, poor bastards.
depressing as hell, stuff like that.
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It's just the kind of stuff that happens - both in war as in peacetime. Navigation is an important factor in aviation, and deserts are unforgiving - add the two, and you're bound to have a catastrophe.
One of the more familiar such stories in peacetime is that of the "Knight Wackett" - James Knight, an Australian, departed in his private plane in 1962 from Melbourne to Perth, however he was not aware that his compass had broken, and that it was pointing in a wrong direction. When the plane failed to arrive, an extensive search was made, but the plane was not found on the route it should have taken - later it was found that because of the broken compass, he had been 40 degrees off course, taking him far outside of the area where the search was conducted.
Fast forward three years, and a plane doing a geological survey of the Australian Outback accidentally discovers the missing aircraft -> [link] . Much to everybody's surprise, it was almost intact, having landed after having run out of fuel -> [link] . When search teams reached the aircraft, they didn't find its pilot, but they discovered he had scratched a diary on the metal panels of the aircraft, explaining what had happened - and that by his last entry, five days after his forced landing, he had decided to try and walk for help. He too was never found, his body probably having been eaten by wild dingos.
The plane was later recovered and restored, and is preserved in a museum as a kind of memorial to the missing pilot -> [link]
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sure your not a aviation history professor?
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I wish such a position existed...
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or the guy giving tours in avation museums?
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Tried that once, but I had to give up due to a lack of spare time...
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Volunteer. Pretty much so everywhere. Even the guys who restore the aircraft in most of the museums here in Belgium are volunteers, which explains why some restorations take a very long time (in the case of the Brussels Air Museum, some of their restorations have taken as long as thirty years, sometimes even more...)
Spare a little thought, for instance, for the poor guys over at the Sabena Oldtimers who did a good ten years to restore their Lysander to flying condition, only to see it substantially damaged in a landing accident a couple of years later. It's taken them another ten years to restore it again...
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Weathering on it is amazing and the whole model looks good
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Thank you for the kind words! :3
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