Gloster "Bleariator"

[jcf]

Blorfish?

BLenheim - gladiatOR - swordFISH

[Mossie]

Or Blowfish, just swap the R for the W.  You can nearly get Gilroy out of Gloster brIstoL faiR(O)Y, definately if you fiddle with the order.  Gilroy Blowfish???

[jcf]

Or Blowfish, just swap the R for the W.  You can nearly get Gilroy out of Gloster brIstoL faiR(O)Y, definately if you fiddle with the order.  Gilroy Blowfish???

Well, if we're playing around just using the letters of each name, howabout:

Gilroy Gormless

[PACOPEPE]

And Gloster Gladifish?. 


Cheers
Fran

[sequoiaranger]

I love how when a subject is picked and the research begins, one finds out so much MORE than before. F'rinstance, in researching the Gloster Gladiator and Malta connections, I found out that the "cheek guns" tucked into the fuselage sides of the Gladiator are open to the pilot's cockpit. Presumably they are "charge-able" or such by the pilot from inside. I can remember the Zero,  early P-40's, and other fighters having nose guns accessible by the pilot, but they were at "eye" level. In an illustration I have, the machine guns are alongside the pilot's ankles (kinda in front), with ammo belts and cans, and then the barrel of the machine gun pokes into a tunnel that leads outside. So...

Here is a picture of the soon-to-be inside of the Blordiator. The kit's seat was WAAAY too skinny for a pilot, so I substituted one from spares. I already have scratchbuilt a cockpit floor and rear decking behind the pilot. The wider cockpit/fuselage necessitated a new canopy. I have tried to replicate the Gladiator look, but will probably have to make adjustments, like having the canopy open so that the "viewer" doesn't catch on that the canopy area doesn't quite match up with Gloster's original. I *MAY* have the side entry flap down, but I don't detail a cockpit much, so hate to call TOO much attention to it. I have also moved the canopy/pilot's compartment back about a quarter-inch (the gray curved plastic spacer), to put it in a place more proportional to the original Gladiator's length.

I will soon have a decal instrument panel and a gunsight, but otherwise here is the gun setup. I used HO-scale armor (ROCO accessories) .50 cal MG's for the 1/72-scale .303's, cans and ammo belts (all custom cut/shaped), and a coffee-stirring-straw cut in half for the "tunnels". It'll all get painted and placed sometime soon.

[Weaver]

The Globrey Glaenhish

GLOster BRistol fairEY    GLAdiator blENHeim swordfISH

[sequoiaranger]

Thanks, weaver, for the suggestion. I am now thinking "Globrey Blordiator". What a mouthful!

Active Sea Gladiators had a ventral bulge between the landing gear for a dinghy, but none of the available kits have this feature. I have now secured a proper "bulge" for the dinghy stowage courtesy of an old Il-28 ventral radar bulge. Although the original 1940 Malta Gladiators were carrier-capable "Sea Gladiators" with dinghy stowage bulges underneath, the bulges and dinghys were dispensed with, along with the Vee-shaped arrestor hooks (probably because of the weight and drag, and the lack of RN carriers in the area and the proximity of the air defense to the Island itself). I think I will include both, with the idea that defensive flights to protect Malta would try to hit the Italian attackers further out than just within sight of Malta rescuers, and that Malta fighters might land aboard RN carriers operating nearby in some sort of shuttle operation.

There really are several "works in progress" as I try to "flesh out" the "bare bones" of the concept. I'm trying to "get there from here" in several aspects. I'm just chugging along, trying to be patient enough to ALLOW a solution to present itself as my mind "googles" itself and my kit stash for answers. It will all come together eventually!

Shown below is the underside of a Gloster Sea Gladiator.

[NARSES2]

Thanks, weaver, for the suggestion. I am now thinking "Globrey Blordiator". What a mouthful!

Active Sea Gladiators had a ventral bulge between the landing gear for a dinghy, but none of the available kits have this feature.

The Pavla kit does - I pinched one of mine for my Fokker D XIX of the Koenig Marine

[Weaver]

Thanks, weaver, for the suggestion. I am now thinking "Globrey Blordiator". What a mouthful!

You're welcome - I thought "Glaenhish" sounded Scottish or Gaelic, so maybe you could work a Scottish engineer into the back-story. Do remember that you can't break the laws of physics, though......

[sequoiaranger]

>You're welcome - I thought "Glaenhish" sounded Scottish or Gaelic, so maybe you could work a Scottish engineer into the back-story. Do remember that you can't break the laws of physics, though...<

Ah cannah do tha, capn; she'll blow!!   Yes, perhaps a Scottish engineer will be the catalyst for the plane. I did like the Gaelic sound of the name. Last year I drove around Ireland and marveled at the Gaelic roadsigns. Funny, too, that so many place names in Ireland have a "K" in them, yet Gaelic does not have a "K".

I had thought of the name "Maltesian", too, since the plane was conceived on Malta (I don't even WANT to picture a sweaty Gladiator mounting an eager Swordfish in a dark hangar!) and will have Maltese crosses featured in the roundels.

If I had been convicted every time I broke the laws of physics...

>The Pavla kit does [have the dinghy bulge] <

Ahh! Being "out of the hobby" for so long, I did not know that Pavla even made a Gladiator. Good for them. Since the Malta defense is **THE** story of the Sea Gladiator, I have never understood why the other mainstream kits did not at least have the option of the bulge and tailhook. I have a vee-tailhook from a white-metal aftermarket kit I can use, but the Gladiator had a fairly flat bottom fuselage, and my whif's rear fuselage extension is oval and not as conducive to a vee-style tailhook. We'll see.

[sequoiaranger]

Things had stalled as I sought to solve how to attach the larger Walrus wings to the Gladiator and have things reasonably match up. I needed to fill a gap and to strengthen the wing attachment, so I used a cut-up section of Gladiator wing (tan) and some .015 sheet (white) to shove into the hollow wing as a wing spar and attachment points to the fuselage:



Then, trying to fill in the interim wing gap, match up the curvature of the fuselage, and have a surface that could accommodate the dinghy bulge, I used an old Heller He-112 (Dark Green) lower wing half, cut out a section, then added .015 sheet (white), and....Jeez what a Frankenstein conglomeration of color (the above and tan Gladiator, blue Hs-126, gray Walrus and gray Il-28, pale blue Blenheim, and brown Ca-313) this is turning out to be! Anyway, here is what the bottom has become, prior to major PSR to shape everything into recognizable and aerodynamic form:

[Brian da Basher]

Nice work on modifying the lower wing, SR! I also like your approach to blending it in with the lower fuselage. I'm looking forward to your next update.

Brian da Basher

[Sauragnmon]

Globrey Glabenfish - it's got nods to its origins, and it kinda rolls off the tongue a little, especially with some of the Brit accents out there.

Hell of a lot of work, old man, keep it up!

[sequoiaranger]

>Hell of a lot of work, old man, keep it up!<

Yes.  A **LOT** more work than I had first envisioned when I took on the project. My general modeling "style" is to minimize construction and concentrate on decoration (camo/markings), but it always seems that projects are more believable when the construction is well thought-out. I don't shirk from complicated construction if it means the concept comes alive, I just don't look forward to it!

Looking at the "cheek guns" post a few posts back, you can see that the original tan Heller Gloster Gladiator kit is and will be a SMALL fraction of the overall effort. The tan you see there is just about **IT** for the Heller model, except for addition of the wheel struts and wing struts (and I'm not so sure about the wing struts---I may have to use something else with the Walrus wings I used). However, I really feel I have kept the Gladiator CHARACTER in all my upgrades and changes. It's gonna **LOOK** like a "rock soup"ed-up Gloster Gladiator when I'm done.

Now I have to spray on a preliminary primer coat to bring all the disparate pieces to color uniformity to scrutinize what needs to be done in the PSR department. The He-112 bottom I put on yesterday will save a lot of PSR, as the curvature continuum from wing underside to fuselage underside fit the added fuselage perfectly (at least the joining points). I still have to "flesh out" the gaps and fillets, but the "bones" are all there, now.

[sequoiaranger]

The idea is to create, in abstract, the land/seascape of Malta from the air. I traced the outline of the wing and colored in with pencils a rough camo pattern--blue harbor inlets, the generally angular ochre of the built-up areas, Dark ochre (I'll get a better paint color than shown here for the "shadows" of the ochre) geometrical accents of the city in shadow, and gray and green for the fields and native rock. The native rock, incidentally, is a gray limestone when found newly exposed, but turns ochre when weathered. Most buildings on Malta are made with native stone and mortar mix, so almost all the buildings are a uniform shade of ochre.

Mind you there will be big cocades on the wings, too. I'll make a rough jpg of those, too, to include in an edit of this post. I can cut-and-paste the cocade onto the wings, but it will take a while. In the meanwhile, here is your first look at the rough "Maltese" camo for the Globrey Blordiator:


And now, with the proposed cocades:


Here below is the "inspriation" for the camo: a postcard that reminded me of the actual harbor of Valetta (my ship docked there, slightly out of picture to the left). The postcard color of the main buildings is less yellow than in reality on the postcard, but seemed about "real" when scanned on the computer:


So basically, the top wing will have the cocades, and the bottom wing will be without them, but similarly painted. The ochre and blue can be sprayed with masks, and then the details will be hand-painted on. Tailplanes will have something similar on a smaller scale. I think I will try to have a straight, middle-fuselage demarcation line like many Gladiators, "Sky" bottom. I had THOUGHT of making the camo and cocades into a single, large decal, but that would only work for the wings, and I'm not sure I could make the computer colors and my paint-bottle colors coincide. Besides some Italian victory markings and the serial number (N 5531), not sure what other markings will go on. The Gladiators on Malta were a mixed bag of Sea Gladiators and regular Gladiators. Most were crated, awaiting a British carrier to be shipped to, so I doubt they already had squadron markings. Since they were the only Allied aircraft on Malta for quite a while, it would seem that squadron or individual markings would be irrelevant. Since we had Gladiators named "Faith, Hope and Charity", this concoction might be "Ingenuity". We'll see.