Early AFC Nose Art - Sopwith Pup B2509

[Brad Cancian]

Greetings all,

Being away from my modeling desk for the last couple of months has given me the opportunity to do some study on particular aircraft markings that have taken my interest. Being an Aussie, naturally I have an interest in Australian Flying Corps (AFC) aircraft. About 6 months ago I was perusing the Australian War Memorial (AWM) website where I noticed an early example of Australian "nose art". Here is a crop of the picture I found:


The image was captioned "Probably England, C. 1918. A small child pictured in an Australian Flying Corps (AFC) Sopwith Pup Aircraft with a group of kookaburras painted on the side, an example of early nose art". Unfortunately no more information was provided on the aircraft, which at the time I thought was a shame as it would make a very interesting modeling project. At that point I put the picture into the back of my head and moved onto other things.

Whilst doing some more research in the last week or so on an unrelated topic, I stumbled across another picture of an AFC pup and some AFC instructors and cadets, and to my astonishment I noticed it too had a kookaburra motif under the cockpit. A crop of this photo is shown below:



Remembering the other photograph, I dug it out and a quick check showed it to be the same aircraft. Whilst some of the other marking details on this aircraft are obscured, what is obvious from this picture is that the last two digits of the serial are "09". What is also obvious is that the aircraft had a fuselage band just aft (and under or overlapping the roundel), with thin white edging. Looking at the tone of the photo, it is clear that the band is the same colour as the blue portion of the roundel. The photo reveals a CDL or white Port wheel cover and a coloured (PC10?) starboard inner wheel cover. The aircraft appears to have a natural wood turtledeck and natural metal cowl panels. Finally, it is apparent that this pup carried a Whitehead Cowling for a 100hp Gnome Monosoupape engine.

Doing a serial number check on the RAAF museum website revealed that only one pup served with the AFC with the last digits of its serial being "09"; that being B2509 which served with No 5 (Training) SQN AFC. Now having a serial number to go with, another search on the AWM website turned up a blurry photo of B2509, a cropped version of which is presented below:

This photo was titled "Minchinhampton, England, 1918. Two Sopwith Pups...at No.5 (Training) Squadron, Australian Flying Corps (AFC). The second pup is identified with the No. B2509 and has a coloured fuselage band and wheel covers". Although the serial number is not visible in the photo, what is apparent is that the second aircraft carries a fuselage band with the same tone of the blue in the roundel with some sort of motif painted over the top of the band in white. The aircraft has a 2-tone coloured starboard wheel cover, the tones of which point to blue outer and white inner circles. Of note is that the port wheel cover is CDL or white. The aircraft also carries a Whitehead cowling. With this evidence, I was reasonably confident that this was indeed the same aircraft that carried the kookaburra motif; B2509.

Armed with this info, I was now confident that I could make a colour profile of this aircraft with a fair degree of accuracy. First I had to isolate the kookaburra design, which was clearly done by a gifted individual. To do this, I had to work out what it was representing so I did not cut detail out by accident. Clearly it looks like a mother kookaburra on the right (with the darker brown and blue plumage of an adult) feeding a worm to her babies (the three birds to the left with the light plumage of young kookabarras - although they don't seem too interested in eating it, an instructor's subtle joke perhaps??). This seems like a very apt motif for an Australian SQN training young men to fly fighting scouts. It also appears that the mother kookaburra is sitting in front of some type of flowers, probably a golden wattle which is a suitably Australian plant being the floral emblem of Australia. I took the first photograph, and skewed it and stretched it to get it as close to straight on as possible. I then isolated it from the background and assigned colours based on my previous assertions. Below is the result:



Lastly, I had to work out what the motif on the fuselage band was. AFC training aircraft carried a myriad of Australian emblems on them (kangaroos, emus etc). In general, there appears to have been no single animal "allocated" to any one SQN (although 6 (training) SQN seemed to carry a kangaroo quite freqently and 8 (training) SQN sometimes carried an Emu). Looking at the line up photo, although the emblem is obscured by the wingtip, it appears that there is a head on a long neck peeking out above the wingtip and some legs and some kind of tail peeking out below. Based on the orientation, it looks as though it may have been an Emu.

[Brad Cancian]

With this information, I have completed the below profile:


I have no pictures of the upper wing of the aircraft, so I am assuming it is marked in the standard fashion.

The only area in question in my mind at the moment is the motif on the fuselage band - does anyone else have any photos of 5AFC aircraft carrying animal motifs on their fuselages that could shed more light onto my assertion? Additionally, just out of interest does anyone have any pics of AFC "noseart" that may pre-date this photo? By "noseart" I mean a painted picture or mural as opposed to a SQN emblem or presentation title. This would interest me.

Any comments welcome, especially if someone has spotted something different to what I have!

BC

[StephenLawson]

Very impressive!

[Carpo]

Hi Brad - I hadn't seen this post before now - pity - it is really good!
I assume you have seen this pic:
http://community.webshots.com/photo/...53545322tqIjuz
This is a 5 SQN aircraft!
Note the Emu on the aircraft behind. I agree with the choice of blue for the emu band. Do you have a reference for this colour?
I would guess that the second aircraft is D4159.
I intend doing a model of A6249 for my collection.
I just have to find a 1/48 pup.
Carpo

Good on yer, Brad. Bloody bonzer piece of work!

[Lufbery]

Very nice, Brad!

When does the decal sheet come out?

I, too, am intersted in WWI "nose art" (fuselage art?). From what I can tell, a lot of the markings were squadron markings (like the Storks, or Lafeyete Escadril Souix markings), with few individuals making personal markings on their planes. But the personal markings are really neat.

Regards,

[Butch]

Eddie Rickenbacker mentions his liberty bond lady on his airplane. I'll see if I can find a picture of the Nieuport in the NASM in Virginia. It has a liberty bond poster doped to the top of the lower wing.
Pete

[bshatzer]

a painting of Rickenbacher's "Liberty Loan" Nieuport is here:

http://mars.ark.com/~mdf/N_28.html

Didn't K&B do a re-issue of the Aurora Nie. 28 with decals for these markings?

Cheers,

[drIace]

Originally Posted by bshatzer

a painting of Rickenbacher's "Liberty Loan" Nieuport is here:

http://mars.ark.com/~mdf/N_28.html

Didn't K&B do a re-issue of the Aurora Nie. 28 with decals for these markings?

Cheers,

Yes, K & B did: but more recently (& imho) a better version the 1/48 RODEN N. 28 kit # 403

[Brad Cancian]

G'day Carpo!

That's a very interesting pic you have there, no I haven't seen it before it looks like maybe a lizard (Frill neck maybe keeping with the Aussie theme?) - this will make for quite a striking model - pity the photo doesn't really show the front of the design .

Looks like my assertion on the emu was good, now I have some evidence to back it up! I don't really have a colour number for the blue, I will ty and match it to the roundel when I get round to making the model - I just have to work out how to make my own decals first

I have an Eduard 1/48 Pup in the stash set aside for this one, I just have to get around to building it. It is one of Eduard's early kits so it is reasonably rough, but it has a very nice etched sheet with it. I picked mine up on ebay but they don't tend to go cheaply as they are the only real injected plastic option in 1/48 and they are fairly rare in my experience...

BC