Focke Wulf Ta 183 Huckbein, PM Models, 1/72 What If

Focke Wulf TA183 Huckbein, PM Models, 1/72 scale

Kit is obviously very basic being a PM kit, didn’t want to do the usual European camo scheme……if you are doing a whiff, you may as well make it really different, so thought I’d do a North African scheme, decals with the kit were poor so ended up a selection from the spares box
Had to come up with an Alternative Time Line back story to go along with this, so………..

Note: 1/JG27 really did operate in North Africa against the British until very late 1942 when it was withdrawn from the theatre after claiming 588 kills…..JG27 as a whole scored over 1,100 downed aircraft during the period

What if Germany and Russia had honoured its various political and economic pacts and were not aggressive towards each other, this would have freed up a massive amount of troops and materiel for other things…………..such as going south into North Africa

Operation Barbarossa had several key objectives…………oil reserves in the Caucasus, ‘living room’ to allow the German people to grow and the enslavement/elimination of the Slavic/Russo population. But similar could have been achieved by going into Africa………..plenty of oil in North Africa/Middle East…….would still be ample slave labour potential

Only downside would be the British presence that was already there but since they would have the massive troop/tanks/aircraft/supplies advantage it would have probably gone the other way than it really did

What if Japan had not launched Pearl Harbour attack? Instead heading west through Indo sub-continent looking for a link up with the German/Italian………British forces would have been squeezed between two front………………no Pearl Harbour would mean USA might not have got involved…..don’t forget up til then America was keen to stay out of what was considered an ‘European war’……but they were still happy to sell us stuff!

So that’s where we are……1946…….Axis Forces occupy portions of Algeria/Libya/Tunisia/Egypt/Palestine/Arabian Peninsula giving them control of the strategic Suez Canal but not control of the Red Sea as the Empire would still control Ethiopia/Somalia/Kenya and therefore the Horn of Africa

So here we have a FW Ta 183 for 1 Gruppe Jadgeswader 27 flown by UnterOffizer Klein based at Cairo operating against the Empires Desert Air Force in the south. The Huckbein would prove to be valuable aircraft………….outclassed by the Me262 in both range and performance it was used greatly as a point defence aircraft being cheap and quick to build, in combat it proved equal to the Spitfires and P51s flown by the Empire and more than capable in tackling the bombers

Nice.