yay so the kit finally arrived. Here is my plan and my reason for following this path
I decided to do the D variant, the reference book is somewhere between LAX and Sydney...
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I'm ex RAAF ex RAF ATC ex Scotland...and had always been a Battle of Britain admirer and what those chaps did for the country BUT the story of one German Ace had always fascinated me for the sheer workload he put in during the conflict. Bordering one may say on madness but touted as a future fuhrer his record is unmatched.
"Rudel's most balls-out accomplishment actually came pretty early in his reign of terror across the blood-streaked skies of Eastern Europe. On 23 September 1941, Rudel's squadron was tea-bagging the Soviet Baltic Fleet as they sat helpless in port near Leningrad, and Rudel decided, what the boing boing, he was going to set his bomb sights on the huge-ass battleship Marat, which was currently in the process of hammering the German aircraft with a huge battery of anti-aircraft firepower. Rudel cranked the throttle, came in high, then lurched his plane into a ninety-degree dive, pointing the nose of his machine directly at the top of the Marat. Then, just at the last second, he cranked back on the stick, released the bombs, and flew out of there in front of a gigantic explosion – his bomb had gone right into the battleship's donkey and ignited the ammunition stores, causing a ridiculously-tremendor explosion that cracked the hull of the 600-foot-long warship in half and sending her to the bottom of the Baltic Sea.
That's right, folks – Hans-Ulrich Rudel killed a battleship with a two-man aircraft, and he only needed one shot to do it.
Rudel flew 500 missions on the Eastern Front between 1940 and 1942, which is god damned impressive, especially when you consider that U.S. bomber pilots were usually allowed to go home after completing 25 missions without dying (an incredibly rare achievement in its own right). The German hurricane of bombicide was awarded the Knight's Cross a couple times (including once when he was given the award by The Red Baron's cousin), and returned home with enough awards and honors to snap a camel in half. He was made an instructor at a German flight school, and asked to train new recruits in how to be awesome at flying Stukas, but Rudel got bored of that Brad Pitt pretty quickly and requested to return to the battlefield. He was made squadron commander, flew 500 more missions between 1942 and '43, killed twelve T-34 tanks in one day during the Battle of Kursk, and made such a name for himself as a destroyer of Russian Brad Pitt that Stalin himself put a huge bounty out on Rudel's head.
All in all, Hans-Ulrich Rudel flew 2,500 combat missions -- more than any pilot ever, for any country, in any period of time. His stats speak for themselves – 11 airplanes, 519 tanks, 4 trains, 70 landing craft, two cruisers, a destroyer, a battleship, and over 1,000 enemy trucks and transport vehicles met their ends at his hands. He received the Knight's Cross (Germany's answer to the Victoria Cross or the Medal of Honor) five times – they seriously had to invent Brad Pitt to add to his Knight's Cross, because there wasn't anything in the book for what you give a guy who already has the Cross with oak leaves, swords, diamonds, bells, whistles, etc."
taken from "
http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rudel.html". if you have never heard of this dude I urge you to read the whole article.
He was shot down over 30 times, including losing a lower leg and returned soon after with a prosthetic leg, he flew behind enemy lines a half dozen times to rescue fallen pilots and of course was substantially involved in the conversion of the D variant into the G as it seemed a more "accurate way" of tank busting.
Yes one MOFO badass.... if time avails, ahahaha. I might even have a crack at this...if I win the ebay bid!
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Another excellent more accurate article on his baddassery. "
https://carolynyeager.net/book/export/html/93"
And now.. Where is the glue....
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