The Mac-Paps, possible aircraft?

[The Rat]

The Mackenzie–Papineau Battalion was formed from Canadian volunteers, on the Republican side of the Spanish civil war. Looking for suggestions on what kind of aircraft may have been available to them, by fair means or foul. The Curtiss P-36/Model 75 Hawk would fit the timeline nicely, as would the Hawker Hurricane, but trying to justify a backstory regarding Britain supplying or losing some might be difficult, given the fact that they had more pressing concerns.  I know that the Republicans had some Polikarpov I-16s, and one Boeing P-26, but a different aircraft would round out the whiffery. Already got a roundel made up by borrowing/stealing the maple leaf logo used by Toronto's hockey team from the 1920s, and adding a red star.

[scooter]

Give 'em Furies (which isn't as far fetched as it sounds) and Gladiators.

[The Rat]

Good suggestion, and I already have a Life-Like Gladiator in the stash. 

[Old Wombat]

Possible problem with the Gladiator:

Spanish Civil War; 17 July 1936 – 1 April 1939

Glaster Gladiator introduced into service; 23 February 1937

Getting a brand new "front-line fighter" into Spain could be difficult (as you said regarding the Hurricane (introduced December 1937, only 10 months after the Gladiator)).

[NARSES2]

I'd certainly go with Furies, Gauntlets (AZ have just issued some) or how about Bristol Bulldog's (Airfix kit) or indeed even a Bristol Fighter (again Airfix) which didn't leave RAF service until 1932 and had equipped some RCAF squadrons as well as lots of Air Forces all around the world.

[jcf]

The Curtiss Model 75/P-36 is unlikely for the same reasons as the Hurricane, plus there's no way the Republicans could afford the purchase cost. The Soviet aircraft where there because the Soviets footed the bill.

Latvia sold eleven Bristol Bulldogs to the Basques and these became part of the Spanish Republican Air Force.

The obvious aircraft for the Canucks is the CC&F GE-23A, the license built Grumman G-23/FF-1 which were built to an order from "Turkey". Of course Turkey never ordered the aircraft it was all a ruse using counterfeit papers.

[The Rat]

The Curtiss Model 75/P-36 is unlikely for the same reasons as the Hurricane, plus there's no way the Republicans could afford the purchase cost. The Soviet aircraft where there because the Soviets footed the bill.

Latvia sold eleven Bristol Bulldogs to the Basques and these became part of the Spanish Republican Air Force.

The obvious aircraft for the Canucks is the CC&F GE-23A, the license built Grumman G-23/FF-1 which were built to an order from "Turkey". Of course Turkey never ordered the aircraft it was all a ruse using counterfeit papers.

Quite right about the Curtiss, when I was mulling it over the parallels with the Hurricane, in terms of availability, were clear. FDR was fairly left-wing for his time, but given the strong isolationist sentiment in America I doubt that he would donate aircraft. The Bulldog is probably the easiest, since Airfix has one available. I like the Canadian connection with the Grumman, bu sourcing one would be more difficult than the Bulldog.

[jcf]

The G-23 is problematic in 1/48th, RVHP did one in resin 20 odd years ago. I have a partially built
one in the box, it had been started by the fellow who gave it to me. It's the original USN marked
release but they did do a CC&F Spanish marked version. It's pretty nice.

The most recent 1/72nd is the Special Hobby kit. MPM and Meikraft did injection moulded kits and
Rareplanes did a vacuform kit.

[Weaver]

The Republican government had money (they controlled the state's gold reserves, at least in 1936) and had agents touring the world with suitcases full of cash trying to buy any arms they could get their hands on. The main trouble was that these agents were amateurs: revolutionary (in Spanish terms) activists and political science professors with ZERO experience in either diplomacy or the arms trade. The result was that they got ripped off by pretty much every dodgy scammer in the world, with little hardware to show for it. Also, a lot of Spain's foreign embassies that were supposed to be helping them were headed by covert Nationalists who in fact did everything they could to put obstacles in their path. In a whiff world, it's not difficult to imagine at least one of these guys finding somebody to give him good advice and doing a deal that actually worked.

The politics of arms trading during the SCW could be incredibly byzantine, which is good from our point of view because it means even the most unlikely choices are potentially on the table. Just two examples of the backstabbling off the the top of my head:

1. One of the biggest small arms suppliers to the Republicans was Poland, despite it having a hard right government. Why? Well WWI and it's aftermath had left Poland with a huge and diverse stockpile of arms, much of it in poor condition, and they urgently wanted to clear house, rationalize and modernize because they could see clearly what would be coming from both East and West in a few year's time. There was no point trying to sell to their political bedfellows in the Nationalists because they were being given everything they wanted for free from Germany and Italy, so they set up one overt group in the government charged with selling arms to Spain, and then another covert group who's job was to trip the trade up with "accidents" as much as possible, while making sure they still got the money. So an awful lot of arms shipments from Poland to Spain went via ships that stopped at multiple ports, and an awful lot of it got embargoed because "somebody" tipped off the local authorities.

2. The Soviets liked to publically give the impression that they were helping the Republicans out of a sense of comradeship with fellow-travelling communists. In private however, Stalin was furious with the Spanish Communists because he'd been trying to engineer better relations with the West and now the Spanish Republic had gone and spooked them (despite the fact that the first Republican goverment was anything but Communist and actually conspired to shut the Communist party OUT). To compensate the Soviet Union for it's trouble, he pressured the Republican government into transferring Spain's gold reserves to Moscow, where he could be sure of payment for what they supplied. That's right: every bullet, rifle and fighter-plane supplied "in solidarity" by the Soviets was paid for, at full market price, by the Spanish, in gold. What's more, when Gerald Howson was researching his book Arms For Spain in the mid 1990s, he discovered something new in the Russian archives. The Soviets had been charging the rouble cost of the arms to the Spanish gold reserves, in dollars. Why? So they could stiff them on the exchange rate. Not only were they bleeding their fellow communists dry, they were ripping them off too...

BTW, I whole-heartedly recommend Howson's book: it's an absolute eye-opener.

[Weaver]

We did a Spanish Civil War GB back in 2010. Might be worth a look for inspiration:

https://www.whatifmodellers.com/index.php?board=111.0

There used to be an excellent website which listed not only all the aircraft that definitely did serve in Spain, but all the ones that were rumoured to as well, the latter divided into "definitely didn't" and "unproven either way". It was an impressively long list and the number of aircraft in all three categories was about the same. Sadly, I can't find the website now, so I suspect it's turned up it's toes and gone to internet heaven...

EDIT: FOUND IT! (Well kinda)
The website has indeed gone down, but The Wayback Machine has archived it thoroughly.
It won't hotlink properly, but copy and paste this into your browser and it should find it:
https://web.archive.org/web/20121203060333/http://www.zi.ku.dk/personal/drnash/model/spain/index.html

[Rick Lowe]

Would the 'Wayback Machine' help there?

https://help.archive.org/help/using-the-wayback-machine/#:~:text=Yes!,can%20be%20used%20and%20referenced.

[The Rat]

Problem solved! Having a ferkle around in the stash turned up the Novo/Frog Tupolev SB-2, which was used a fair bit during the Spanish civil war. It's missing a horizontal stabiliser section, and corresponding elevator, but I can just make sure that the two remaining pieces are on top and fake the undersides with some plastic card. The fuselage turret transparency is also vacationing elsewhere in the universe, but since it's just a curved piece of plastic (imagine the sliding part of a Hurricane canopy, but larger) I may be able to fettle up something. It was in a bag when I bought it about ten years ago, box photo shamelessly stolen from ebay:

[NARSES2]

 

[The Rat]

       I've done it again. Look in the dictionary under 'masochist' and you'll see a photo of me. As if the Heller M.S.406 wasn't stressful enough, this one is equally bad. Once both are done I may just look in the stash for the best possible kit and get cracking on it. Therapy.