Your Plane is My Plane

There are many variations on different aircraft and armored vehicles. One of the most interesting is those that have been captured by the enemy and then re-employed against their former masters. This photo shows the cover of the first in a series of books about Allied aircraft that were captured and then put back to work. This cover shows a P-38 Lighting, P-47 Thunderbolt, and a B-17 Flying Fortress that were captured and used by the Germans in World War Two.

These aircraft were used for many reasons, naturally they were checked for performance to compare against their own aircraft and new technology that could developed for their own use. The Germans also employed them in training, nothing better than training against the actual weapons used by your enemies.

These make excellent subjects for model makers. Seeing a B-17 in German markings is very stunning since it is so different from what we are used to seeing. The Germans used these aircraft on operational missions. They were perfect for airdropping agents or supplies to agents behind Allied lines. The silhouette of the B-17 would be familiar to Allied airmen and to Allied anti-aircraft gun crews, and they would be reluctant to shoot at it, unless the markings were clearly visible to them. At night, or from a distance these markings would be hard to see.

German B-17s and other Allied planes were used to follow bomber streams. They could then vector in other German planes or coordinate the ground flak response. In miniature wargame terms, these planes should be harder to spot as enemy than a regular enemy plane. I try to simulate this by making them be closer than normal before they can be shot at for the first time, and they are shot at with a die modifier making the percentage chance to hit lower. After this first shot, combat proceeds normally.

Since the Germans only had a few Allied aircraft, it is reasonable to limit your collection to one or two captured planes. These planes were often captured after crashes, and sometimes built from several damaged planes to make one plane. The Japanese also captured a few Allied aircraft, and the American operated Japanese and German planes also. I sometimes like to use older models and then convert them to captured kits.