Czech Master Resin 1/72
Fokker C.V D RR
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History
At 0800 hours December 23, 1939 “The Flying Dutchman”, Anthony
Herman Gerard Fokker, died at age 49 in New York City as a result of Meningitis
contracted following surgery. His body was interred at Dreihuizen-Westerveld
in his native Netherlands on February 3, 1940. The aviation life of this
pilot, designer, showman, publicist is well known starting with his barely
flyable “Spin” of 1910 through his move from the Netherlands,
where he could not get adequate financing from the conservative burghers,
to Schwerin in Germany where his fighters were amongst the best in WWI
to his “escape” from Germany to Schipol-Amsterdam after the
1918 armistice with his factory tools, raw materials, work in process,
and the workers and their families to become a leading builder of advanced
civil transports. His adventuresome life would make a great movie! His
company survived him to finally fail in the late 20th century when their
second generation of turbo-prop and turbo-jet transports failed in the
marketplace. This, as an aside, leaves Boeing – my company –
as the world’s oldest continuously operating builder of airplanes;
all others have disappeared as separate entities either by being bought
or by merging with another maker or makers.
The Fokker C.V D, with which we are here concerned, was the fourth development
of the C.V A, which first flew in 1924. Not many of the –As, -Bs
or –Cs were built; the bulk of the production occurring with the
C.V D and E. These had tapered wings whereas their predecessor had straight
wings. Buyers had a wide choice of power plants from 350 to 730 hp for
both types. A liquid cooled Rolls Royce Kestrel V-12 engine of 575 hp
powered the subject of this review. After January 1926 Fokker built only
C.V Ds and Es. They were both good sellers being bought by the Air Forces
of the Netherlands, Bolivia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland,
Italy, Hungary, China and Japan. The Luftwaffe used C.Vs captured from
the Danes in WWII. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Hungary also
produced their own C.Vs under license. The last C.Vs were retired by the
Swiss Air force only in 1954. Three of the type survive; a C.V E in the
Swiss Air force Museum at Dubendorf, a Royal Dutch Air force C. V D in
the Aviodome Museum in Amsterdam and another C.V D in the Royal Norwegian
Air Force Museum at Bodø.
The Kit
 There
are 39 parts in CMR’s usual pale cream resin and 15 in an extra
strength white resin for the undercarriage and wing struts. Two vac formed
windscreens complete the physical kit for this elegant, fine lined biplane.
The parts are all straight and bubble free. My only quibble with the
kit is the obvious inadequacy of the white resin for the wing struts;
there simply isn’t enough strength in them for the job. I’d
substitute struts cut from either Strutz brand rolled oval brass rod stock
of the .045” x .028” size – coded yellow by Strutz -
or Detail Associates p/n 2528 flat brass bar stock of .042” x .015”
size to ensure a good solid upper wing installation. Fitting the top wing
will be very tedious and fiddly and an assembly jig is essential. I do
wish that manufacturers of biplanes would give some thought to engineering
them to make fitting the top wing a straightforward matter. Monogram,
Hasegawa, and Accurate Miniatures have established the paradigm for this.
 A
small decal sheet with both early and late Dutch national insignia and
markings for seven airplanes is included. This is well printed and is
in perfect register. There’s not much variety here, though, as all
seven airplanes are khaki over light blue. The ten pages of instructions
include nine very clear photos of C.V Ds in Dutch markings.
Conclusion
This is a very good kit of a very obscure, but handsome, subject. I
believe there will certainly be other versions of the C.V from CMR soon
as the type was so widely used and it will be easy for CMR to reconfigure
their master parts for the large variety of engines used on it by the
various operating nations.
Many thanks to CMR for providing the review sample.
References
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Fokker – Aircraft Builders to the World: Thijs Postma, Janes,
London, 1979, ISBN 0-7106-0059-3.
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The Rand McNally Encyclopedia of Military Aircraft 1914-1980: Enzo
Angelucci, The Military Press, NY, 1980, ISBN 0-517-41021-4.
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The Complete Encyclopedia of World Aircraft: David Donald, Barnes
& Noble, NY, 1997, ISBN 0-7607-0592-5.
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Rand McNally Color Illustrated Guides – World Aircraft 1918-01935:
Enzo Angelucci & Paola Matricardi, Rand McNally, New York, 1976,
ISBN 0-528-88166-3.
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Great Aircraft collections of the World: Bob Ogden, Multimedia Publications,
UK, 1986, ISBN 0-8317-4066-3.
NOTE 1: The “Encyclopedias” noted above are not really very
encyclopedic.
NOTE2: Detail associates products are available from shops selling model
railroad supplies. Strutz rods are available from Aeroclub.
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