AIRFIX 1:72 ROLAND CII 'WHALE'

 

Reviewer: Dave McDougall  (crustyoldseadog@aol.com)
Kit submitted:  11 June 2001

Roland CII “Whale” (Airfix 1/72nd Series 1 kit #9 61040)

One of the most original trends of thought in German aircraft design during 1915 was seen in the L.F.G. Roland CII which had been evolved by Dipl. Ing. Tantzen.  Tantzen's ambition was to present a drastically cleaned-up airframe, eliminating as much as possible of the "built-in" drag of interplane, centre section strut arrangements and attendant bracing.  The CII was the result.

CIIs began to equip the Fl. Abt. Units for reconnaissance and also for escort duties by the beginning of 1916.  Usually the reconnaissance machines were armed only with a Parabellum gun for the observer.  Later, a forward firing Spandau gun was added to the armament.  Frequently, CIIs operated in considerable numbers, the reconnaissance machines being protected by the escorts.

The CII could come as a nasty surprise to an attacking fighter; used to the slow lumbering two seaters commonly encountered at the time. The CII was no easy kill. Powered by a Mercedes DII, it was practically as fast and maneuverable as most fighter aircraft of the time. The RFC ace, Albert Ball cites the CII as being the best of the German Two seaters with very effective fields of fire to the front and rear. The low position of the top wing gave the pilot a much improved field of view although it made landing the aircraft a tricky procedure.

The story is told, probably apocryphal, that when the officials attended upon the trials of the CII one member was heard to remark (in reference to it’s shape), “Truly this machine is a whale!” and the type certainly became unofficially known as the Walfisch.

The CII stayed in service until 1917 when it found itself being replaced by the newer two seaters and relegated to training duties.

The kit has 31 parts molded in light blue plastic. These were nicely molded with no flash and are fairly typical Airfix. The wings have a reasonable representation of fabric; overscale but not bad. Other detailing is adequate providing you’re not expecting something of level of detail provided by Toko/Roden et al. I was pleased parts were sealed in a plastic bag as a couple of the smaller bits had (of course) come away from their sprue. (I believe this is a reboxing of the Heller kit - Ed)

The instructions are contained in a one-sided leaflet roughly A4 in size. Construction is clearly laid out in a five step exploded diagram. I found this easy to follow and didn’t have any problems with placement of any parts.

Only one paint scheme is offered. This is for an aircraft flown by “Oblt. Ritter Von Schleich, Field Flieger Abteilung 2b, German Air Force 1916-1917”. This is shown on the bottom of the kit box with paint call-outs given for Airfix paints. A model completed in this scheme is also shown on the box lid. I didn’t follow this scheme as I’d seen a nice scheme which someone had done on a 1/48th scale model. This was basically dark green overall with light purple (almost lilac) added to make two-tone camouflage on the upper wing surfaces.

I used Humbrol enamels when painting my kit. The ones I used are:

I followed the kit instructions (more or less) when building my model.

The first step I did was to assemble the fuselage. I had no guide on what colour the cockpit interior should be so I settled on giving it a coat of 50%H103/50%H148 and then lightly drybrushed this with H34 to bring out what little detail there was. Airfix don’t supply any cockpit ‘bits’ except for a seat. I wasn’t enthusiastic about scratch building anything so I simply painted this H62, gave it a wash of H170 and then glued it into position. (Note that there isn’t a seat for the observer; he was expected to stand!) It was then simply a case of fitting the four fuselage windows into position and then glue the two fuselage halves together. I had no problem with the fit of these and I just gave the edges a gentle sanding to tidy them up.

A good point to mention here is that the assembled fuselage is a bit weak due to the presence of the four windows. I suggest handling it gently as it’s easy otherwise to ‘pop’ a window out of position and back into the interior of the fuselage. This in fact happened to me once but I got the window back into position with the help of a pair of angled tweezers and some blu-tak.

Airfix supply figures for the pilot and the observer. These are actually quite good moldings, but I didn’t use them.

Whilst doing the fuselage, I also assembled the two part engine/exhaust. I drilled out the end of the exhaust using a pin drill and then painted the assembled engine H53 followed by a wash of thinned H33 and then lightly drybrushed with H56.

The next thing to do was to paint the exterior of the fuselage around the cockpit/engine area as it’ll be awkward to do this later once the engine and wings are in position. My chosen colour scheme called for the fuselage to be painted a dark green. I had some difficulty in finding a suitable shade of green amongst my paint stores. However, I eventually found an old tin of Humbrol Authentic colour (remember them?) HP4 lurking at the back of my paint trays. Once I’d blown the dust off I found it was still useable. There are several engine ‘bits’ here (in addition to the main engine/exhaust which I mentioned above) which you either need to fit or are molded onto the front fuselage. So I took the opportunity to fit/paint these (the same colours I used on the engine/exhaust).

I then glued the one piece propeller/spinner into place and painted it H70 for the wooden blades and H27002 for the spinner. The latter paint you can buff up with a soft cloth to get a nice polished sheen. There’s an option to make the propeller moveable but I didn’t bother.

Onto the next step. – I fixed the tail into position. (This needed a little bit of sanding to clear some flash but otherwise fitted fine.) Then I turned to the wings. Both the upper and lower wing had two injection pin marks on the underside. Another bit of careful sanding got rid of these. The bottom wing proved to be another good fit. – It sits neatly into the underside of the fuselage. Having stuck the bottom wing into place I then glued the two cabine struts onto it (they have a tab which fits easily into a corresponding slot in each wing). I followed this up by attaching the upper wing. This also went on very easily, slotting into place into a gap provided on the top of the fuselage. I was very pleased about the easy build here; especially when compared to some of the difficulties I've encountered when building biplane kits in the past.

I followed this up by painting the central area of the top wing in my base colour of HP4. Doing this allowed me to fit into the position the forward firing machine gun (painted the same way as the engine) and the protective ‘cage’ thing.

The final bit of the build was assembling and painting the undercarriage. This comes in five parts. – Two wheels, axle and two pairs of “legs”. I always paint an undercarriage before sticking it onto a kit, and this kit was no exception. (HP4 again with H33 for the rims). The supporting “legs” have pins which allow them to fit neatly into corresponding holes in the underside of the fuselage. Thankfully, once assembled, the undercarriage was reasonably sturdy. The very last thing I did was glue the tail skid into position. This comes as a separate piece which is a plus. (With kits which have a skid molded onto the fuselage, I usually end up by forgetting it’s there and breaking it!)

Now, I was left with one unused item. – The instructions tell you fit a small skid like gadget (part 30) onto the undercarriage. You’ll see it on the boxart above. However, none of the photographs I looked at, nor my set of 1/72nd scale plans showed this thingie; so I left it off my model. If anyone can enlighten me what it is….

All I needed to do now was to finish the paint job and do the decals. As I mentioned at the start of this review, I did my own thing when it came to the painting. – I painted the underside of the wings and the fuselage a mixture of H90 and 103 (in roughly 70/30% proportions). The rest of the aircraft was painted HP4 then a wavy camouflage pattern of light purple (almost lilac) was added to the upper wings. I created this by lightening MC28 with 34 until I’d obtained a light enough shade of purple. The paint job was finished of by painting the cockpit rims H62 and tailskid H56.

The very last job I did before doing the decals was to fix the observer’s machine gun into position.

I had decided to use the decals supplied with the kit and it was with some trepidation that I approached these due to their age. However, I needn’t have worried as they went on remarkably well. Pre-1918 crosses are supplied for the tail and the top/bottom wings. The latter are on a white background square. I’m pleased to say that rather unusually for Airfix decals the white is actually opaque.

This is a nice kit that’s basically accurate but you super-detailers out there will have to do plenty of extra work on it. Because it’s such a simple and easy kit to put together, I recommend it particularly for anyone wanting to build a biplane for the first time and for beginners generally.

Unfortunately, the kit is currently out of production. However, it is not  very difficult or expensive to buy second-hand. With Airfix starting to re-release some of their WW1 kits this year, we can hope perhaps that they’ll follow up their initial re-releases with this kit.

 

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