(Air Month) Bleaseworld Flies East

I've spent a goodly chunk of the afternoon working on some planes for Air Month. They include a couple of Camel's, two Harry Tates and two DH2 pushers and a Wings of War repaint. The pushers will have to be Western Front and I'm looking at doing them for 24 Squadron late 1916/early 1917, however the rest will be painted up for service in Eastern Europe. The first plane of the Workers and Peasants Red Air Fleet is the repaint that you should see tomorrow!

The whole period from 1917 to 22 is incredibly interesting with Russia plunged into civil war, the Baltic States fighting for independence, the German Balts trying to set up the Baltische Landeswehr, the Polish fighting the Soviet Russians/Ukranians/Lithuanians at different (and sometimes the same) times. In fact the whole region seems to become a big free for all on occasion allowing many different opponents for armies and air forces (the Lithuanians alone fought the Germans, Baltic Germans, Red Russians, White Russians and Poles in this period!). Looking slightly beyond the Baltic region and we have the disintergration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with Red Hungary fighting the Czechs who themselves also fought the Poles.

Whilst dogfights were not common they did occur so I have decided to paint up some Workers and Peasants Red Air Fleet planes for starters, with some for the White Slavo-British squadron, a couple of Estonian planes and one or two Lithuanian ones to follow (and after that possibly something for the Baltische Landeswehr, Latvians and maybe even the Georgians!).

There are a number of really useful online sources for this period that take a bit of hunting down such as:

Wings Palette - a fantastic resource for air wargamers but irritating to navigate. I've found the best way to do it by war (the link I've included defaults to the RCW). The search facility is quite good and quicker than following links.

Chandelle Archive - some interesting articles with colour schemes for inter-war planes including RCW, Gran Chaco and Formosa.

Insignia Magazine - the online pages are very useful, but if you are really into a subject, hunt down the printed guides. The ones on the inter-war Baltic air forces are essential if you really want to get into the Independence Wars as a period.

Of course Google is your friend and a bit of google-fu will find other useful painting schemes...