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Gotha GVa
The Gotha has a special niche in the WWI air war, both for the terror it struck in the hearts of Londoners (totally out of proportion to the damage they did compared to the carnage in the trenches) and for foreshadowing the modern air war to come. They were slow (87 mph), carried a limited bomb load, and were ultimately driven from the London skies. But they forced the British to withdraw a significant number of fighters for home defense.
The Gotha has a particularly brutal look, with its massive wing-span (78 feet, or six-and-a-half feet at 1/12th scale), blunt nose, huge engines and the 8-wheeled landing gear like the extended talons of a diving bird of prey that I chose for the Arizona Models GVb version I built. Apart from building the damn thing, how was I going to portray it on this webpage? I had done a background picture for the AerodromeRC Fokker DVII that I had done previously, but that was only a 36" wingspan. This was something else. But Jaime of Arizona Models has the machinery for printing blueprints, he liked what I had done with the DVII, and he graciously offered to print up some large artwork (28" x 52") if I supplied him the files. That and a large brownish-green shag rug and I was in business. The trick then was visualize the shots carefully, work different lightings, and then carefully crop in PhotoShop, using the program to work the backgrounds when they didn't extend far enough or were wrongly lit. (For the record, I made no photographic alteration of the plane itself other than adjusting lighting.) I have deliberately gone for a dark look to convey the proper look of menace.
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For the batch below, I took an aerial shot of old London, with flames added, laid it flat, and then took a sky picture to prop up behind London. By carefully working the perspective and camera angles, it came out fairly well. For some shots, I used a strong spotlight to show the Gotha caught in the spotlights of the defenders below.
As I contemplated actually starting the kit, looking at the blueprints and the pile of sticks and pondering how I was going to build this six-and-a-half foot wingspan monster on the pathetic little desk I work on, I frankly gave up in despair. But my wife Rose knew, like in Casablanca, that if I didn't do it, I'd regret it forever. The 12th picture is not Ingrid Bergman, nor is it the notorious British spy Mata Foxy, but rather Rose herself in a rare captured photo.
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One problem building the Gotha is that the number of actual pictures is small, and lacks full blueprints. In addition, many details are poorly depicted, as the German high command did not have the best interests of future modelers in mind (vicious Huns!). On the Arizona Models plans themselves, it states that the features shown depict actual Gotha features, but not all from the same Gotha. The kit took over a year to complete, and innumerable flesh wounds. Below are a few details, and I am putting together a well-illustrated manual on the full build, to spare others the agonies I endured.. The final pic is of my heroic assistant Trixie, without whose and Rose's support this plane could not have been built.
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