The Spring Offensive of 1918

[The Rat]

The morning air, chilly as it was, hinted at warmer days ahead as Jasta 27 Commander Hermann Göring strode out of his quarters and surveyed the airfield. He had slept right through a minor raid that night and was surprised to see evidence of destruction. He called out to a young soldier and demanded to know what had happened. "Some French bombers hit our telephone station last night Sir!" was the reply. "Have it repaired immediately" Göring barked, "There were supposed to be some important orders coming today."



During the course of the war the area had changed hands several times, and communications wires criss-crossed the ground. The only one which appeared to go on forever without a break was accordingly spliced onto the remains of the radio/telephone, once it was functional the operator tuned in to headquarters, and almost immediately there was a problem. They had patched in to a British communications system! "Excellent" said the Commander, "We can now listen in to their orders while we try to establish contact with headquarters!" The information gleaned this way was quite interesting. Apparently the British had managed to intercept German orders and they were abuzz with speculation about what was being called the Spring Offensive. The young soldier translating was new, nervous, and confused, but that didn't prevent the brash future Reichsmarschall from sending requests to his mechanics. Unfortunately the translation was seriously mangled with the result that 'spring', as in the season, was not changed to 'frühling', but to 'feder', as in boing boing boing...



Another mistake at the maintenance end resulted in a second article, the Offensive Spring. No pictures are known to survive but the item did serve for a few years post-war as an advertisement outside Madame Fifi's House of Pleasure.



The Model

This is the Revell 1/72nd Fokker DVII, with the decals for Göring's mount. (I couldn't resist having a joke at that pompous buffoon's expense) It goes together fairly well in my opinion, but I have very limited experience with WWI subjects or biplanes so others may think differently. I started by spraying the entire model with Tamiya Fine Primer, and it looked so good that I didn't bother with any other white paint on top of it. The decals don't seem to want to snuggle down much despite a liberal application of Micro Sol. The springs were scrounged from old ballpoint pens and the field-mod release system is black thread (the wife didn't have a colour match for hemp rope).

[Hman]

 

[Ed S]

Yep, looks like a spring offensive.   

Original and nicely done.

Ed

[cthulhu77]

Hysterically funny, and wonderful !!!!  With the first pic, I was wondering what you were up to, then busted up laughing with the rest. Thanks !!!!   

[Mike Wren]

    

[Weaver]

Pythonated Whiffery -  nice one

[puddingwrestler]

oh dear.

[Joe C-P]

You could nickname it "Samantha". 

[Rafael]

Snorted out my coffee on the bench. This is a real goooood model and backstory.

Rafa

[BlackOps]

She's pretty slinky lookin'    Nicely done and twice as fun! 

[NARSES2]

 

Great stuff

[Brian da Basher]

Absolutely fantastic, Ratty! This is the apex of whiffery: a well-built model with "interesting" modifications and a rip-roaring backstory!

One of my favorites!!!

Brian da Basher

[frank2056]

It looks great! The back story is hilarious!

[The Rat]

Thank you gentlemen. It was originally going to be some sort of tank, but WWI tanks are not easy to come by, especially if you don't want to empty your wallet. Now I have to hope that I got the translations correct, should've checked with my mother-in-law but she has no sense of humour.

[puddingwrestler]

Airfix produces a 1/72 British tank for cheap. Revell (ex Matchbox) has the Renault FT-17 in a double pack with a Char B1, also for cheap, and Emhar 1/72 is not very expensive. Also Hat who mainly produce wargame figures do a couple of cheap tanks, but the quality is not great. You could always just get some soldiers and mount them on pogo sticks as well (Pogostick, olive drab, mine jumping over for the use of)