Scale Models, Real People, Extraordinary Stories
The Battle of the East China Sea. "Nearly all [Beast] stories depend for their success on Jack killing the Giant, Beowulf or St. George slaying the Dragon... That is their inner grammar, and the whole shape of the story leads towards it." - A.N. Wilson
This is the story of an aircraft the RAAF didn't want to use and a model I didn't want to finish.
The men of the 348th, 349th and 6th Night Fighter Squadrons were more than the nose art on their P-61's.
The 13th Air Force did not fight the most glamorous of wars, theirs' was a war of ground attack, relentlessly destroying Japanese ground forces and infrastructure. They fought, not from centralized bases closely tied together, but from island bases, spread hundreds of miles apart.
This update brings to life another of the older articles, from around 2005-2006 and tells the story of No.25 Squadron RNZAF in Bougainville in mid 1944...
Early on the morning of 7 April the 15th and 21st Groups were poised ready for the signal to start engines. The briefings of the day before and that morning had everyone eager to get the operation underway...
"I often think of 409 at the bottom of the Pacific with some of my personal gear aboard. After all this time there is probably nothing left..."
