Model Description

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kit had been previously built and bought bits from Camberwell market for four bucks.
Very basic resto. Carefully clean parts, make up new wing & cabane struts, undercart & put on Airfix stand.
Pretty much left build as was with glue stains, paint chips & paint runs.
Impressed with care taken to paint pilot.

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PAULIPAEDIA
AURORA’S 1/48 ALBATROS D-III

The Albatros D-III fighter from the First World War is an excellent example of the beautifully aggressive combat aircraft. With its streamlined fuselage and sesquiplane configuration that included raked wing tips and vee-struts it was a great advancement in performance and looks when compared to its contemporaries with their slab-sided fabric covered fuselages. A Second World War equivalent that comes to mind is the Spitfire Mk-XII. Hot-rodded with a 36.7 litre Rolls-Royce Griffon engine and with its effeminate wingtips clipped, it too exhibits a similar aura.

Allied air superiority was established in early 1916 with the help of the French Nieuport 11 and 17 sesquiplane fighters. Sesquiplane, meaning one-and-a half wings, was where the lower wing had half the wing area of the upper wing. Their performance impressed the German Inspectorate of Flying Troops who issued captured examples to the companies of Albatros, Euler and Siemens for them to basically copy. The Nieuport fighters were small and highly maneuverable aircraft. Its flaw was that the sesquiplane lower wing had a single spar and was of lightweight construction. Subsequently, as this wing lacked strength it would twist and quite possibly break due to the stresses of diving or maneuvering.

The Euler D-I and the Siemens-Schuckert D-1 were blatant copies of the Nieuport. A handful of Euler D-Is were built and they were used for training purposes. Siemens’ D-I, of which 95 were built, served primarily on the Russian Front. At Albatros, development of the D-III, which was a D-II fighter with this novel wing layout was begun in June 1916.

Designer Robert Thelen ensured that the D-III was as aerodynamically as clean as possible. The engine was almost completely enclosed, low drag surface radiators were used and the main wing bracing, another great contributor to drag, was kept to the minimum. The semi-monocoque fuselage derived its strength from its shell being made from 2mm thick birch ply panels that were steam softened, pressed to shape by moulding and then glued together. Made as four separate sections these mouldings were then attached to the fuselage frame. The strength obtained from this method of construction did away with the need for internal wire bracing. You can read further about this in Robert Mikesh’s superb “Restoring Museum Aircraft” or go to youtube where you can see WW1 footage on an Albatros fighter being assembled at the factory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?V=ZquMUQktXJI

The ‘D’ prefix for the D-III stood for ‘Doppeldecker’ (biplane) that was allocated to single-seat and single-engined biplanes that were usually armed with two fixed synchronized Maxim machineguns. These guns were more commonly known as Spandaus as they were manufactured at that arsenal. Likewise the D-IIIs Mercedes inline six cylinder engine of 14.8 litre capacity was known as the DIII. ‘D’ here was the abbreviation for the engine manufacturer Daimler-Mercedes and ‘III’ was for its horsepower rating. German aero engines were divided into seven classes according to their power rating and Class III were for those rated 130-195hp.

The first frontline units began receiving the D-III in late December 1916. However its service introduction was blighted with the reports of lower wing failures, four reports being made 17/1/1917. The Albatros with its lower wing constructed in the same fashion as the Nieuport had inherited its structural weakness.

In 1917 a second factory, the East German Albatros Works, or Schmeidemuhl, Posen began also building the D-III. These aircraft were of more robust construction and did not suffer from the wing failures as of those built at the Johannisthal factory in Berlin. As the D-III began its ascendancy over the Royal Flying Corps in April 1917, its successor, the D-V fighter was on the verge of production. Although officially superseded by the latter production of the D-III was not stopped. Indeed more were ordered and built until early 1918. The Albatros fighters were the backbone of the German fighter force until the introduction of the Fokker D-VII in May 1918 and even then they were not entirely replaced.

Aurora released the first plastic kit of the Albatros D-III in 1956, forty years after its first flight. Moulded in green plastic it was part of its 1/48 range of WW1 aircraft and would be reissued three more times between 1957 and 1975. In 1976 the tooling was reworked so the D-III now became a D-V. This was moulded in tan plastic and the changes that were made were the removal of all embossed markings with modifications to the tailplane and fuselage.

All of Aurora’s kit moulds were sold to Monogram in 1977. Perhaps one of the rarest Albatros kits is the D-V that was released by Monogram New Zealand in 1978. Along with the 1/48 Fokker D-VII, Nieuport 11 and SE-5a, this kit was packaged in boxes identical to the last Aurora release now sporting the Monogram logo. Printed on the box was ‘Made, printed and packed in NZ by E. Allan Brooker Ltd, Auckland.’ Since then Monogram US has released the Fokker D-VII and SE-5a but there has been no reissue of the Albatros or Nieuport.

If you wish to build an inexpensive Aurora Albatros D-III this may be the only way. Merit, of Great Britain, also copied most of the Aurora range of WW1 fighters from 1957. Their D-III was moulded in red plastic and made until 1961 when Merit folded. Artiplast, of Italy, acquired the Merit line of aircraft kits and their D-III appeared in 1968. Artiplast shut their doors in 1973 and three years later it was the Czech firm SMERs turn to reissue the kit in 1978. Finally, in 2017, one hundred years on from the Albatros D-III seeing combat, MisterCraft of Poland, has resissued the Merit/SMER D-III.

The idea for this article came from the chance happening of buying the bits of an Aurora Albatros at the Camberwell market a couple of months back. The plan was to execute a simple resto by making new struts and undercart, which ironically were sourced and modified from the spares of a 1/48 Merit/SMER DH-2. Paint was to be retouched only where necessary and in keeping with this theme Humbrol’s scarlet was used while as much of the original build, glue spills and paint runs, was to be kept that way.

I handed over eight dollars. Four for the Albatros and four for an accompanying novelized account of the film “Von Richthofen and Brown”, where, as I recall, upstart colonials shoot to pieces the age old etiquettes of Empire and where the character development of Hermann Goering relies heavily on hindsight and portrays him as a collector of pornography and a ruthless murderer. I wonder if the original builder was inspired by that film and modelled Richthofen’s Albatros. Richthofen actually amassed the greater part of his tally flying the Albatros than with his more familiar Dr-1 Triplane. Given that the kit was painted all red and the pilot’s cravat like scarf is also red I’m inclined to think this was the case.

Thanks Paul!!