Thanks for the interest chaps.
I hope to start on this later this week, once the Bf110 is more or less finished.
As mentioned previously, this is an addition to my long-planned 'BoB - Hardest Days' collection, which covers specific actions between 13th August and 6th September 1940, and this subject will be one of nine Bf109s, along with a further eleven Luftwaffe aircraft, and around ten RAF subjects.
The aircraft is the Bf109E-4, 'Yellow 1', flown by the Staffelkapitan of 9/JG26, Oberleutnant Gerhard Schopfel (umlaut over the 'o') on August 18th, generally regarded as
the hardest day in the Battle.(Oblt. Schopfel was appointed Kommandeur of III/JG26 ten days later, and became Kommodore of JG26 in September 1940)
Oblt. Schopfel was leading his Staffel in the early afternoon of August 18th, and had just crossed the south coast of England when he noticed a squadron of Hurricanes, in tight 'vic' formation, below him, heading towards Canterbury whilst climbing in a wide spiral. These were the aircraft of 501 Squadron.
Signalling to his Staffel to remain above and cover him, Schopfel dived out of the sun, and quickly dispatched the two 'weavers' above the formation, before darting in to attack the main formation, firing a short burst at the Hurricane at the rear of the formation, which went down in flames.
The remainder of the Hurricanes flew on, totally unaware of what was happening behind them, as Schopfel closed in behind the fourth machine and shot it down too. However, this time he had got rather too close, and pieces of the Hurricane smashed into his 'Emil's' propeller, and with oil splattered all over his windscreen and down the sides of the cockpit, unable to see a thing, Schopfel turned and dived away, having downed four Hurricanes in two minutes !
His fourth victim was the Hurricane flown by Kenneth Lee, who only became aware of Schopfel's presence when he felt the explosions behind him and the rounds smashing into the armour plate behind his seat. With flames licking back from the engine, and a splinter in his right leg, Lee rolled the Hurricane onto its back, undid his seat harness and fell clear at 17,000 feet.
As he had heard rumours of pilots being shot whilst under their parachutes, Lee calmly set his stop watch, and timed his free fall descent, lasting sixty six seconds, before deploying his parachute at 6,000 feet !
(Kenneth Lee's Hurricane will be another of the models in this collection).
Despite a number of photographs of Schopfel's aircraft, the Werke Nummer is not known, although there are a few detail features worthy of note.
The colour scheme was a high demarcation of RLM 71/02 over RLM 65, with the upper wing surface camouflage extending on to the wing root fillet. The yellow '1' numeral is in the smaller style of 9 Staffel, and the aircraft has the Staffel Kapitan's pennant on the radio mast. The rudder has the first style of yellow I.D. marking, in the form of a segment, and the tips of the main wings and the tail planes are also yellow, with the 9 Staffel red 'Hollenhund' emblem beneath the cockpit, and the JG26 'Schlageter' shield beneath the windscreen. Following the combat described above, there were 12 Abschuss zeichen, painted in black, on
both sides of the rudder.
The upper wing crosses are positioned further inboard than usual and, although head armour was fitted in the cockpit canopy, this lacked the over-head plate, and it appears that a retaining cable was not fitted to the canopy.
The pics below show the box art for the Tamiya kit being used, along with a pic of Schopfel in the cockpit of his 'Emil', and the same aircraft in it's camouflaged, sand-bagged revetment on the edge of the vast wheat field at Caffiers.