“As England, in spite of her hopeless military situation, still shows no sign of willingness to come to terms, I have decided to prepare, and if necessary to carry out, a landing operation against her. The aim of this operation is to eliminate the English Motherland as a base from which the war against Germany can be continued, and, if necessary, to occupy the country completely.”
– Fuhrer Directive No. 16, announcing Unternehmen Seelowe (Operation Sea Lion), the invasion of England, July 16th, 1940
Its been an eventful few days. Not only have we received some of the latest 1:72 scale jets from Hobby Master but so too their first ever 1:48 scale Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter, resplendant in an early war mottled grey camouflage scheme (HA8701).
Numerically the most abundant fighter produced by either side during WWII, the Messerschmitt Bf 109 formed the backbone of the Jagdwaffe on both the eastern and western fronts, as well as in the Mediterranean and North Africa. Of the eight distinct sub-types within the huge Bf 109 family, the most populous was the G-model, of which over 30,000 were built between 1941-45. Despite its production run, only a handful of genuine German Bf 109s have survived into the 1990s, and with the serious damaging of the RAFs G-2 at Duxford in October 1997, only the German-based MBB G-6 and Hans Ditte’s G-10 (both composites) are currently airworthy.