Sea Plane

The whole point about Sky Pirates is that they have to have some aerial capabilities! I was thinking about a plane to use for some of the scenarios and having recently watched The Phantom on DVD realised that we had to be talking about float planes of some sort. A quick search on eBay for 1/48 scale sea planes came up with this from a Japanese Anime film called Porco Rosso. Now, I am not particularly interested in Japanese Anime but this one does sound rather intriguing so I may have to pick up the DVD.

I just thought this was a superb model of a pulp seaplane. It's even red! So I bought it on eBay and it arrived today. It looks completely splendid and I can't wait to build it. It even has a female pilot figure who looks very much like the female Sky Pirate! Key things for wargaming are that the hull is flat enough that I won't have to make it a waterline model and, indeed, it comes with a little cart to hold it when on the shore.

The box claims that it is based on the Savoia S21, a Schneider Trophy plane from the twenties. However it doesn't look much like one (see above for the S21, which is a pusher for a start).




A bit of further research showed that the man who drew it for the cartoon based it on his recollection of a plane which he thought was the S21. In fact, he had been thinking about the Macchi M33 from 1925.