After seeing some of the small bases people have mounted their models on, I bought a bunch of small wooden plaques. One question I have though is airfield surfaces, WW1 can be simply grass or other natural materials, and by Korea the majority of airfields were concrete.
So approximately when was the grass airfield replaced with more sturdy surfaces.
Anyone know a good source for the perferated steel matting in 1/72?
For carrier decks when was the wooden deck replaced with the asphalt of modern carriers. Also for wood carrier decks how large are the planks (I’m working in 1/72 so if you know a good size of basswood or balsa to use that would be appreciated).
These will be quite small areas, so not too worried about details, but would like to keep the surface reasonable, an F-86 on grass just wouldn’t look right.
IN WWII you saw the transition. Heavy bombers such as the B-17/24/29 could not operate well from grass strips. They bogged down. Especially in wet climates. Once jets came in to play where the engine would suck in all sorts of stuff that was potentially fatal to the engine, then prepared airfields became a a true necessity.
concrete, asphalt, packed gravel, ground and crushed coral, grass, PSP matting and even hard packed dirt. Much depends where when and what aircraft were being operated from the field. Runways and taxi ways were typically different than the revetment or parking areas. Under fighters they would lay down some boards or PSP to park them on. Heavy aircraft such as bombers and some fighters needed more substance under their girth.
As the jets arrived (Korea) they required much longer runways than prop driven aircraft. They also didn’t sport high flotation tires either, but narrower stiffer sidewalled ones. Most early jets had intakes high off the ground so debris wasn’t much of a problem for AF jets which saw more forward land based operations than Navy.
There are a lot of videos on the net showing fighters and bombers operating off of various types of airfields, some rear area some front line and some even show them during foul weather. We lost a lot of good aircraft and pilots because of the poor field conditions they were forced to operate from. Sad to see a young pilot lose his life because his luck ran out due to bad field conditions. Some pilots didn’t die at the hand of the enemy, but that of mother nature and muddy flooded airstrip.