COLOMBIAN VENOM

[NARSES2]

Colombian AF Vickers Venom April 1942

[NARSES2]

Known as La Rana (the Frog) in Colombian service because of the bulge observation windows - Colombia had 18 of them delivered in 1938/1939 by Vickers

[NARSES2]

This aircraft shot down a USN Curtis SOC-1 over the Southern Canal Zone on 3rd April 1942 during operation Jaguar

[retro_seventies]

looking good there chris - unusual subject too (2 brownie points)    

[nev]

Nice and colourful Chris  

What kit is this?  I know you're fond of the more obscure subjects    

[lancer]

Kit wise, I'd guess it's the Magna kit. Bloody brilliant work Chris, looks fantastic.

[Swamphen]

 

[Jschmus]

Very nice! Is the aircraft a Wif or did it exist??

If I'm not mistaken, the Venom was produced for the same deisgn competition that resulted in the Hawker Hurricane.

[Captain Canada]

Nice work, Chris !

I thought it was a Hellcat at first  

You can get a good look to see if the gas-caps are tight on the wings with those windows, eh ?

Cool !

And it's only the first ?

 

[NARSES2]

Thank you kindly gent's. In answer to your question's.

The aircraft is the Vickers Type 279 Venom which was built to (F5/34) and first flew in 1936. It lost out to the Hurricane but I've worked on the basis that given Vickers historical involvement in arming S America they went on a tour of S American countries with the prototype and picked up a number of orders. Only 18 were delivered to Colombia however before the outbreak of WWII and an embargo on export sales. The remaining Venom's under construction were quickly navalised and issued to the FAA as Sea Gladiator replacements - Martin H has a model of one of these (sorry if I've laced my scenario into your's Martin - but it works !)

The kit is Magna and was my first resin after I returned to modeling. It's a very nice build and  I personally think a good introduction to resin kits.

The decals are from Aztec's Stunning Sabres Part 1

As for first entry, I thought if I can't match the quality then I'll go for quantity   Seriously, I have my own S American scenario and so have a slight head start, plus after reading the various thread's and trawling my decal bank I find I have some good schemes for maybe a Mystere and a Mig 17. You just have to be careful about the distinguishing line between WIF and real. I'd looked at doing a Ju W34 in use as a makeshift bomber in the Gran Chaco War only to find out that there is some evidence that the Bolivian's did use it in that role, although it may have been the Swedish built K43/47 version ?

Lots of prototypes/low run production types eventualy ended up in S America during the 20/30's

Chris

[Martin H]

Feel free Chris...the idea suits me fine mate    

[Mike Wren]

great stuff Chris