Douglas Bader's Spitfire Mk.Va

In my last post, the Battle of Britain had just been won and Douglas Bader's 242 Squadron, flying Hurricanes, had just been moved east from Duxford to Martlesham Heath to join 11 Group, defending the approach to London.

It is now early March, 1941, and Leigh-Mallory, Air Officer Commanding (AOC) No. 11 (Fighter) Group, sends for Bader. He tells him that approval has been for the establishment of a Wing Commander (flying) at each of the Group sector stations. Bader is to be promoted into one of these new Wing Commander roles, with operational control of three fighter squadrons. The big wing concept, over which Douglas had fought so hard, was at last about to come to full fruition. He is given the choice of either Biggin Hill or Tangmere. Douglas selects the Tangmere station.

Bader’s Tangmere Wing consisted of 145, 610, and 616 Squadrons, all equipped with the Spitfire Mk.V. The Mk.V was essentially a compromise aircraft, rushed into service to meet an urgent requirement for a fighter with a performance superior to the latest model of Messerschmitt, the Bf 109F. It, however, failed to provide the overall superiority Fighter Command needed so badly. At high altitude, where many air combats took place, it was found to be inferior to the Bf 109 on most counts, and several squadrons equipped with the Mk.V took a severe mauling that summer. 

In July 1941 the Wing received delivery of the Spitfire Mk.Vb. These replaced the eight machine guns of the Mk.Va and earlier variants with four machine-guns and two 20-mm cannon. The cannon arrangement enabled pilots to open fire at much longer ranges, and from the outset Bader did not like it; he had always been a staunch advocate of close-in fighting, and maintained that the cannon would tempt a pilot to open fire from too great a distance, with a consequent drop in the chances of success. Even when the Wing was fully equipped with Mk.Vb he stubbornly persisted in flying a Mk.Va, which was armed with machine-guns only. He always claimed that he never managed to score any hits on anything when flying a cannon-armed aircraft. He was wrong, but stubbornly refused to admit it. 

During the summer of 1941, Bader's Tangmere Wing flew target support missions over Northern France. On Saturday 9th August, 145 squadron was to fly top cover and was first away, followed by 616 and 610. Bader was flying in Red Section of 616 Squadron. Each aircraft were recognisable by the code letters that identified the squadrons to which they belonged: SO for 145, DW for 610, YQ for 616, and Bader, as Wing Leader, carried no code; only the large letters DB, one on either side of the fuselage roundel. 145 Squadron missed the rendezvous point, reducing the Tangmere Wing by one-third of its strength; nevertheless, its task was target support, and there could be no question of calling off the operation. Together 610 and 616 Squadrons set course over the Channel and in land from Le Touquet to the airfield of Bethune-Labuissière, the target of the Bristol Blenheims they were protecting.

Red Section, like the others, climbed in finger four formation. It resembled the outstretched fingers of a right hand, with a Spitfire at each fingertip; from left to right, it was Flying Officer Jeff West, a New Zealander; then the Wing Leader; then Cocky Dundas and finally Flying Officer Johnnie Johnson, who one day would make a name for himself as the RAF’s official top-scoring fighter pilot. It was a truly formidable quartet.

The Spitfires were at thirty thousand feet when twelve Messerschmitt 109s (BF 109)were spotted prowling about two thousand feet below. Having the superior height advantage, Bader's Spitfires were beautifully positioned for a ‘bounce’. He took Red Section down in a steep dive towards the centre four Messerschmitts. The German pilots, fully realising their peril, broke away hard in all directions and individual dogfights spread out across the sky.

With the melee done, the Spitfires landed back at Westhampnett, Tangmere’s satellite airfield just north of Chichester to refuel. All the Spitfires of the Tangmere Wing were accounted for, all that its, with the exception of Buck Casson, Blue Section, and the Wing Leader, Bader, both of whom were missing somewhere over France.

Almost forty years later, in Fight for the Sky, Douglas Bader himself described what had happened to him that morning, high over France:

He said that he did everything wrong. He signalled ‘attacking’ and dived down too fast and too steeply. He closed so fast on the BF 109 that he had no time to fire. Levelling out at 24,000 feet, there was then no one in sight, he was alone in the sky.

Ignoring his own advice to pilots when alone, which was to get down to ground level and fly home, and noticing a couple of miles in front at the same height three pairs of BF 109  he dropped down just below them and closed in to attack. Oblivious to this lone Spitfire's presence, the back one of the middle pair was destroyed with a short burst of machine gun fire from close range. Bader was just opening fire on the second when he spied the left hand pair of BF 109  turning in towards him. He thought, now was time to go home.

He then made his final mistake. The rule is: always turn towards your enemy, never turn your back; if you do, you lose sight of your enemy and present yourself as a target. The remaining pair of BF 109 to his right were still flying straight and level, so he turned towards them, intending to pass over the top or even behind them, so that he could then dive away for home in the opposite direction. At this stage there was no problem ... but this was a morning dogged by bad judgement and it wasn't over yet. Banking hard over to the right he crossed too close to the second BF 109  collided and lost his tail!. Had he turned left towards the enemy coming at him, as was the rule, there would have been no danger, except from a lucky bullet!

Bader managed to get out of his Spitfire, less one leg which had got caught somewhere in the top of the cockpit. He had sustained two broken ribs and lacerations to his throat and one hand when he landed. Douglas was taken to a hospital in St Omer, where once as he recovered from his injuries, he attempted the first of many escapes. It was not long before Bader was recaptured and while he never managed to successfully escape back to Britain, he never gave up trying and did his uppermost to be as much of a nuisance to the German authorities as humanly possible. The fact that a year later, on 18 August 1942, he was confined to Colditz castle, the forbidding fortress perched high on its rock some twenty-eight miles south-east of Leipzig, is testament to how successful Bader was at this. 

On 13 April 1945, the prisoners were awakened by the roar of aero-engines as American Thunderbolt fighter-bombers swept overhead, diving down to strafe some unseen target as armoured spearheads of General Hodges’ 1st US Army, approached from the west. All night, shells screeched overhead as the Americans battled it out with the SS, who were positioned behind a ridge to the east. At about eight o’clock in the morning of 16th April, the Americans liberated Colditz. Douglas had been a prisoner for three and a half years.

For my Douglas Bader Spitfire Mk.Va, I had to use Airfix's 2002 release of their Supermarine Spitfire Mk.I kit. No one, as far as I could make out has ever made a MkVa and as the Mk.I was visually similar to the Mk.Va, in that the latter just had an uprated engine, it made sense to use this as my base kit. 

The DB code letters and W3185 serial number decals were an after market purchase and I again used the Ammo MIG early WWII RAF colours - despite their overt brightness - to complete this build of the Spitfire Mk.Va in which Douglas Bader crashed out of the sky over France in the summer of 1941.

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The model:

Brand: Airfix
Title: Supermarine Spitfire Mk1
Number: 01071
Scale: 1:72
Type: Full kit
Released: 2002 | Rebox (Changed box only)

Douglas Bader's Hawker Hurricane Mk.I

In April 1933 Douglas Bader was invalided out of the service having lost his legs on 14 December 1931 when he crashed doing some ill advised low level aerobatics, prematurely ending his RAF career. With the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, however, the RAF hierarchy - desperate for pilots - decided that this pilot, albeit with no legs, was indeed fit for operational flying.

On 7 February 1940, Flying Officer Bader was posted to 19 (Fighter) Squadron at Duxford. It was equipped with Supermarine Spitfire Mk1 fighters, and its commanding officer was one of the men who had taken off alongside him on that fateful afternoon, eight years and just under two months earlier; his old friend, Squadron Leader Geoffrey Stephenson. Bader saw little action during the so called phoney war  until 28 May, when his squadron was ordered to fly their Spitfires down to Martlesham, an airfield near the coast a few miles to the east of Ipswich, following which the order was simple and consisted of just four words: ‘Patrol Dunkirk, 12,000 feet.’ Bader finally opened his score of enemy aircraft destroyed on a 1 June when he shot down a Messerschmitt 109. 

A nimble Douglas Bader leaps from his Hurricane Mk.I

On 24 June 1940, the now Acting Squadron Leader Bader assume command of No. 242 squadron, part of Leigh-Mallory's 12 group, at Coltishall, near Norwich. Freshly back from the bitter fighting in France, the squadron's mainly Canadian air and ground crews had escaped with little more than the clothes they stood up in. While the squadron was fully up to strength, with 18 brand-new Hurricanes, it was doubtful whether they could be kept flying for very long as all the spare parts and tools had been lost in France, and repeated requisition demands for replacements had produced no result. With equipment and moral of the squadron in equal short supply, the initial reaction to the arrival of their new commander, with no legs, was close to being the last straw. After putting on one of Bader's breathtaking flying displays for the pilots, he then drafted a signal to both Group and Fighter Command Headquarters: ‘242 Squadron now operational as regards pilots but non-operational repeat non-operational as regards equipment.’ This caused more than a little stir up to Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, the C-in-C Fighter Command, but it had the desired result. The required supplies arrived and one of the Canadian pilot's was soon then to report ‘Legs or no legs, I’ve never seen such a God-damn mobile fireball as that guy.’!

There was, however, little work for 12 Group until on 30 August, Douglas at last got the call for his squadron to fly south, to Duxford. Here in the south, the offensive against the RAF airfields had been relentless and the squadrons of Park's 11 Group were almost exhausted, their airfields mercilessly battered and it was time for Dowding to bring in his first reserve, 242 Squadron. Bader was instrumental in perfecting attack formation and strategy, suggesting even the idea of pulling together multiple wings to intercept attacking aircraft en masse. However, while 12 Group may have been able to have formed up in time, 11 Group  were far too close to the coast to receive sufficient prior warning to join them.

Not convinced by these Ammo MIG paints, too bright!

Then, on 7 September, came the German high command decision that dumbfounded every Luftwaffe combat leader. From the highest level - that is to say, from the Fuhrer’s Headquarters - came a directive ordering the Luftwaffe to switch its priority from the British fighter airfields to London. This then placed the attackers within range of both 11 and 12 Group and Bader's 'Big Wing' theory could finally be put to the test. With the Hurricanes of 242 and 310 (Czech) Squadrons and the Spitfires of 19 Squadron the plan of action was simple enough. The wing would be scrambled from Duxford as soon as radar detected the enemy force building up over the Pas de Calais, and by the time the Germans set course over the Channel the British fighters would be waiting for them over the Thames estuary, with the two Hurricane squadrons at twenty thousand feet and the Spitfires about five thousand feet higher. The battle would be joined over eastern Kent, with the Spitfires taking on the enemy fighter escort while the Hurricanes went for the bomber formations, breaking them up and generally hampering their progress, buying just a little time for the 11 Group squadrons to get to altitude and attack in turn; by which time, if all went to plan, the enemy would have completely lost their cohesion.

The nose art that No. 242 Squadron’s aircraft carried .. i.e. a cartoon showing a boot kicking Hitler. I believe the boot may have originally been marked “242”, though this decal does not have this .. the decal instructions also had it positioned lower and further forward than in the original picture. 

By mid-September, Leigh-Mallory was totally committed to the big wing idea, and he assigned five squadrons to Duxford with Douglas Bader as wing leader. As well as the three original units (242, 310 and 19) there were now two more, 611 (West Lancashire) Squadron with Spitfires and 302 (Poznan Polish) Squadron with Hurricanes. Together, the squadrons were known semi-officially as the 12 Group Wing. On 13 September, Douglas learned that he had been awarded the Distinguished Service Order. The following morning, the five squadrons of the 12 Group Wing assembled at Duxford for the first time, and twice in the course of the day Bader led the sixty fighters into the air to patrol the northern outskirts of London.

The Battle of Britain was effectively over by the end of October and the squadrons of Fighter Command returned to more or less routine convoy patrol work, with just the occasional skirmishes with packs of enemy fighters. For the most part, German bombers were now coming by night but with the science of night-fighting still very much in its infancy, the day fighters were ill-equipped to deal with these night-raiders. 

The Airfix Kit .. it's 2020 new decals I never used 

Late in 1940 Bader's  242 Squadron began to receive more modern Mk.2 Hurricanes. Powered by a two-stage super-charged Rolls-Royce Merlin XX engine and fitted with a Rotol constant-speed three-blade propeller, the Mk.II had a top speed of 342 mph at 15,200 feet and a much better rate of climb than the Mk.I.

On 16 December, 242's Hurricanes were moved east to Martlesham Heath, where the squadron joined 11 Group. Douglas now had a DFC to add to his DSO, while the squadron’s pilots had also earned nine DFCs since he took over in June. Between then and the end of the year, No. 242 had claimed the destruction of 67 enemy aircraft for the loss of six of its own pilots, of whom one had been killed accidentally while diving out of a cloud.

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The Model:

Brand: Airfix
Title: Hawker Hurricane Mk.I
Number: A01010A
Scale: 1:72
Type: Full kit
Released: 2020 | Rebox (Changed decals)

Space Shuttle

Today is the 40th anniversary of the launch of the world's first spaceplane and coincidentally 60 years to the day that Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the earth. 

NASA Space Shuttle

On Sunday 12th April 1982, astronauts, John Young and Robert Crippen, aboard the Columbia Space Shuttle, heralded a new era of commuting into space. I was just 17 years old at the time and had been following the development of the Space Shuttle for many years. I still have my copy of Hamlin's The Space Shuttle Handbook in which I wrote my name and date of purchase, January 1980, as was my habit back then, together with an inked summary of the first Shuttle 3 launches: April '81, November '81 and March '82

Revell's 1:144 scale Model of Space Shuttle Atlantis

The winged spacecraft we tend to refer to as the Shuttle is actually just called the Orbiter. The Space Shuttle is comprised three parts, the Orbiter, a solid fuel rocket to initiate the launch and two reusable boosters.

Entering into the spirit of exploration, NASA named the five Orbiters after famous ships that have charted the oceans of the world. Orbiter-102 was Columbia after the sloop which explored the mouth of the Columbia River in 1792. Orbiter-103, Discovery, is named after the vessel in which Henry Hudson searched for the north-west passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans in 1610. Orbiter-104 was Atlantis, Orbiter-099 Challenger and Orbiter-105 Endevour all names of ships that logged millions of miles conducting research and exploring the oceans. Orbiter-101 Enterprise, named at the request of many fans of the Star Trek television series, was, however, the first to actually fly. Enterprise was used for Air-Launch Flight Tests released from the back of a Boing 747 airliner in1977, and although was planned to be made ready for space flight, this never happened.

 

That first space flight of Columbia which I documented in my Space Shuttle Handbook reads:

Shuttlenauts: Capt. John Young 50; Capt. Robert Crippen, 43 

Launched: Sunday 12 April 1981 (13:00) - OK - But 15 of 27,000 heat resistant tiles lost

Orbiting: Monday 13 April 1981 - Cargo doors open / operate OK; Tuesday 14 April 1981 - Cargo doors close OK; 36 Orbits completed

Landing: Tuesday 14 April 1981 (19:14) - OK - after 54 hour flight, 57 seconds ahead of schedule at Edwards Airforce Base in California's Mojave Desert

  

Columbia went on to deploy the Space Lab, the reusable laboratory developed by European Space Agency (ESA) during the early 1990s and then was tragically lost on 1st February 2003 at the end of its 28th mission over Texas approximately 16 minutes before landing. The cause of the disaster was a piece of polyurethane foam insulation which broke off from the Space Shuttle external tank and struck the reinforced carbon–carbon leading edge of the orbiter's left wing. When Columbia reentered the Earth's atmosphere, the damage allowed hot atmospheric gases to penetrate the heat shield and destroy the internal wing structure, which caused the spacecraft to become unstable and break apart.

Space Shuttle Atlantis was first launched on 3 October 1985 to deploy a Department of Defense communications satellite but is most famous for performing the first Shuttle docking with the Russian Mir Space Station on 27 June 1985 and playing a instrumental role in the construction of the International Space Station (ISS) between 19 May 2000 and 8 July 2011, the Space Shuttle's last ever mission.  It is a fact that without the Space Shuttle the ISS would never have been built. Indeed, following the grounding of all Shuttles after the loss of the Shuttle Columbia in 2003, assembly was held up for almost four years, while the Russians ferried crews back and forth to ISS. 

Shuttle loading bay opened showing the radiators and the ESA Space Lab

The Shuttle was born as a steppingstone to routine space transportation ferrying people, cargo, satellites and space station modules to low earth orbit, from where nuclear-powered rocket stages would send the next generation of astronauts to colonise the moon and deeper into space. It was believed that the Shuttle would be capable of making up to 60 flights a year but as the 1970s wore on it became apparent that such extravagant expectations could not be met. The hope that the Shuttle could be turned around within two weeks was impossible to fulfil and keeping the thermal insulation tiles in place and undamaged during launch and re-entry was to be a significant challenge to the programme.

My interpretation of Atlantis in Earth's orbit

The Shuttle lasted 30 years and spanned 3 distinct and separate phases:

Phase 1 1981 - 1986 :  the first 25 missions, in which an attempt was made to increase flight rates and carry all manner of government and commercial satellites; 

Phase 2 1988 - 1998 : the next 67 flights during which the shuttle was restricted to non-commercial payloads, flying military missions and docking with the Russian Mir space station; 

Phase 3 1998 - 2011 : the last 43 missions building the International Space Station, at last carrying out the role for which the Space Shuttle was designed. 

Atlantis ends the Space Shuttle era

My Model

For my model of the Space Shuttle, I used Revell's reboxed 2005 kit which was showing its age! The flash and moulding across the whole model was poor, making for a very frustrating and one of my most unenjoyable builds and unfortunately this reflects much of the final finish that I achieved.

I finally finished the model in the 2011 colours of Orbiter-104 Atlantis, as it would have been seen on its last visit to the ISS and the last ever flight of any Space Shuttle. I painted but did not bother to include the astronaut provided, it looked daft moulded in a 'standing to attention' position. The clear stand was equally unusable so I found another in my stash which, having decided to have the wheels up,  would do as a stopgap, and I could not be bothered to paint the nose in the suggested mid grey, perhaps I'll return to that at a later time. 

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The kit:

Brand: Revell

Title: Space Shuttle Atlantis
Number: 04544 (Also listed as 80-4544)
Scale: 1:144
Type: Full kit
Released: 2013 | Rebox (Changed box only)

Douglas Bader's Bristol Bulldog

Douglas Bader joined the RAF as an officer cadet in 1928 as one of six annual prize cadetships offered by the Royal Air Force College Cranwell. On 26 July 1930, Bader was commissioned as a pilot officer into No. 23 Squadron RAF based at Kenley, Surrey, flying Gloster Gamecocks.

In 1931, a couple of months after his twenty-first birthday, Bader was selected to fly in 23 Squadron’s aerobatic display team. At the same time, the Squadron began to replace its Gamecocks with a new fighter, the Bristol Bulldog IIA. Powered by a 490-hp Bristol Jupiter VII engine, the Bulldog was much faster than the Gamecock — it could do nearly 180 mph flat out — but it was also a good deal heavier, which gave it a tendency to lose height during certain aerobatic manoeuvres such as slow rolls.

After a poor game in front of the England Rugby selectors at the weekend, Bader was feeling mildly depressed on the morning of Monday, 14 December, when he went down to ‘C’ Flight to see what his orders would be for the day. 23 Squadron had been picked to appear at Hendon Air Display three years running and it would be a tremendous achievement appear a fourth time, so Douglas threw the Bulldog around the sky for an hour and a half, ridding himself of some of the weekend’s anxiety, but not all. He had hoped then that lunch with two fellow pilots at Woodley Aero Club, near Reading, would have improved this but when some of the keen young members of the Club asked the three RAF pilots if they would put on a show for them, Douglas was goaded into agreeing and the three Bulldogs took to the air. 

While the other two continued their climb, Douglas pulled up in a steep turn to head back towards the aerodrome, dropping the aircraft lower and lower until it was only feet above the grass. The Bulldog’s entry speed for a roll was 120 mph — safe enough at altitude, but leaving very, very little margin for error low down. Bader aimed for a spot just in front of the clubhouse and began his manoeuvre, pushing the stick smoothly over to the right to start his roll; once well past the vertical, his port wingtip coming down to point towards the ground, he applied rudder to maintain the height, vital now, for his speed was slipping. Unable to create the required lift, the heavy Bulldog sideslipped the last few feet into the ground. 

Bader’s right leg was damaged beyond repair; requiring it to be amputated just above the knee. The surgeon hoped to save his left leg but that too, having been badly crushed, had to be removed from below the knee. Such horrific injuries one would not have gleaned from his logbook, where, after the crash Bader made the following entry :

Crashed slow-rolling near ground. Bad show. 

After a lengthy period of recovery and being fitted with prosthetic legs, Bader underwent tests at the Central Flying School, believing it a formality to retuning to active service. The RAF hierarchy, however, decreed that,  although he passed the flying and medical checks, an officer could not fly without legs, there being nothing in King’s Regulations to cover such a case. In April 1933 Bader was invalided out of the service prematurely ending his RAF career .. or did it?

The Model

For Badar's Bulldog, I used both Airfix's original 1960s kit and their Vintage Classics rerelease. My first attempt at the original ended in disaster when I glued the upper wing together totally wrong. I had intended to buy the new kit to just use its upper wing, but after breaking the old wing into 3 and rejoining the pieces in the correct sequence it didn't look too bad. So I built both!

For Bader's aircraft decals I used a set from Model Alliance, which despite the cover art did not include the roundels nor the full tail stripes! The 1960s decals were well past their use by dates so I made use of the rereleased set's national markings and decided on painting the now extra kit in the colours of the RAF College which, in the Model Alliance drawings, did not have tail markings.

I also has a go at rigging Bader's aircraft, but the Ammo Mig rigging kit was so awful to use and difficult to see I'd even done anything, that I only managed 2 wires.

Overall, I'm very happy with the end result(s), they were great fun little kits to build.



International Space Station (Phase 2007)

Just to recap, for Christmas, I received the gift of Tim Peake's autobiography 'Limitless'. As the subjects of my scale models are inspired by events and observations, it should be no surprise that this inspiring book has steered me to kick off a mini project focussing on 3 of vehicles which feature in the 3 phases of Tim's flying career. The Army Air Corps helicopter pilot, test pilot and astronaut. 

Tim Peake the Astronaut

In 2010, following his initial 4 years with the Army Air Corps as a Gazelle helicopter pilot and 12 years as  instructor and test pilot on the AH-64 Apache helicopter, Tim graduated as an Astronaut with the European Space Agency. 

On 11th December 2015 Tim became the first Britain in space when he was assigned to Expedition 46 to the International Space Station (ISS). Tim launched on the Russian Soyuz TMA-16M rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan with fellow astronauts, Sergey Volkov, Mikhail Kornienko, Yuri Malenchenko and Timothy Kopra, for the 4 hour flight to join Commander Scott Kelly who would be remaining on ISS while the earlier Expeditions' crews, whom Tim and team were replacing, departed for earth.

ISS Expedition 46 patch, 2015

The 46 icon in the foreground of the patch represents the forty-sixth expedition mission to the International Space Station. Earth is depicted at the top with the flags of the countries of origin of the crew members: the United States, Russia and the United Kingdom. The Union flag of the UK is displayed in a position of prominence in recognition of the significance of the first British ESA astronaut to fly in space. The outer border is in the shape of a triangle with an unbroken border, symbolising the infinite journey of discovery for past, present and future space explorers. The names of the six Expedition 46 astronauts and cosmonauts are shown in the border.

Tim's mission of gravity free experiments and even a space walk, concluded on 1 March 2016 when he bounced down to earth landing on the Kazakh Steppe, a vast region of open grassland in northern Kazakhstan. His was possibly a harder landing than this counterparts on Apollo missions I remember from my youth landing in the Ocean! or better still that experience by the Shuttle crews of the 1980s. 

The International Space Station (ISS)

NASA's idea of the space station was first publicly shared in 1963 at the most unlikely venue, the Ideal Home Exhibition! The space station would be the springboard to the planets but it took until 1984 for President Reagan to actually authorise NASA to begin work on a space station and to 'do it within a decade'. 

The Soviet space program, having lost the race to the moon, meanwhile, had been launching space stations for 20 years. Their Salyut series of space stations first launched in 1971were followed up with the Mir (peace) space station in 1986. Mir presaged a new capability for keeping people in space, using the building block approach to expand the facility into a fully equipped laboratory.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union on 25 December 1991, Russia lost territory, natural resources, manpower, factories and government facilities now located in what, almost overnight, became foreign countries. There was just enough money to maintain the Mir programme but their shuttle Buran was abandoned. In June 1992, President George Bush of USA and President Boris Yeltsin of Russia signed an agreement pledging cooperation through Shuttle missions to Mir. This resulted in the setting up of frequent ferrying flights of Russian cosmonauts aboard the Shuttle and Americans aboard a Soyuz between Earth and the Mir Space Station.

International Space Station ISS (Phase 2007)

This relaxation in political tension led in 1993 to Bill Clinton's presidential decision requesting NASA bring in Russian expertise and forge a new working relationship within a five-team partnership comprising the USA, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada to create a truly International Space Station - the ISS.

ISS Phase One - missions to Mir. Following agreement to merge their efforts, NASA and its Russian counterpart set to work planning a series of missions that would prepare the way for assembly of an international laboratory in space - one hosing astronauts from several countries. 

ISS Phase Two - the assembly. By 1995 the scale of the ISS had grown to 75 assembly flights in a complex schedule of launches planned to start in November 1997 and finish in June 2002. By 1997 this had been paired back to 45 and the final configuration settled. The agreement was for a 'T' configuration for the ISS modules with 8 solar panels, 4 extending from each end of the top of the "T' called the truss assembly. Nodes would be sighted down the length of the 'T' connecting the European Colombus and Japanese JEM modules to the US and Russian modules which were the first to assembled. 

The first module launched was planned to be built by Boeing in the US, but as costs spiralled NASA pushed for Boeing to cancel their build and pay Russia for a replacement. In November 1998 the Russian built Zarya (Sunrise) model was launched. Visually similar to the Mir core module and designed primarily for living and working in, it would initially serve as a powerhouse and tug. 

The second ISS element lifted into space in December 1998, was the first of 3 nodes called Unity, it was the first piece of US hardware. The nodes are places where engineering and systems equipment are located while doubling as connectors between modules and other structures. 

The third element was the Russian-owned Service Module Zvezda (Star), launched in July 2000, delayed 2 years by holdups in manufacturing and postponed launch dates.

Annotated with ISS Phases Two to Three

ISS Phase Three - permanent habitation. The arrival of the Solar Arrays in December 2000 would enable the station to provide a permanent home and work environment for its occupants. February 2001 saw the Space Shuttle Atlantis attach the 13 tonne US Destiny science laboratory to the Unity Node delivered 3 years earlier. Additional trusses and solar arrays followed.

ISS Phase Four - final assembly. With the anticipation high for an early completion of the giant station, hopes were dashed when the only vehicle capable of transporting large loads into space was grounded. The loss of the Shuttle Columbia in 2003 held up assembly for almost four years, while the Russians ferried crews back and forth to ISS. 

In August 2007 Endeavour was the first Space Shuttle since 2003 to resume flights to the space station and enable the final assembly to be completed. Between 2007 and 2011 the final elements comprising, 4 further solar arrays, the final 2 nodes, the European Lab - Columbus Orbital Facility, Japan's Jem modules, Canada's remote arm, and the Science Power Platform were all delivered, completing - for now at least - the ISS assembly.

The Model

I was amazed to learn that anyone had created a scale model of ISS, so was thrilled to lay my hands on this Dragon 1:400 scale kit, even if it was based on its assembly as at 2007, prior to the Shuttle flights resuming after the 2003 Columbia tragedy. 

Dragon's 1:400 Scale Kit and my Haynes Owner's Workshop Manual to assist in construction!

This kit, therefore, shows ISS as it would have looked after completion of Phase Three rather than how Tim would have seen it when he arrived in 2015.

Just need to put it together now 

The finished model before adding the CGI background

The Model

Brand: Dragon
Title: International Space Station (Phase 2007)
Number: 1102
Scale: 1:400
Type: Full kit
Released: 2020 | Initial release - new tool