Sometime in 1944, my Dad volunteered to join a flight of lend-lease P-39s on the way to Russia. He could never remember the exact date, but it had to be after March 1944, since that’s when he got his fighter pilot’s wings. While over the Med, he says, a Macchi 200 attacked the formation. Where it came from and what it was doing there, nobody knows. Dad shot it down, and when his flight landed, he took a Jeep to find the wreck.
He shipped the top cowling section home to his folks! It’s been hanging in the (leaky) garage ever since.
After years of “trying to get around to” building a Macchi 200, I finally finished Pacific Coast’s 1/32 scale one. So here it is on top of that (severely weathered) cowling! (The bullet holes are NOT all from the shoot-down - several GIs decided to use it for target practice after Dad got it back to base):
The event is something I wish I could find out more about, but no records were saved, and Dad couldn’t remember particulars. Oh well.
Anybody building a full size MC.200? Got a cowl for ya!
That certainly is a unique display…and the 200 ain’t bad, either!!
You’ve done quite a nice job there…there’s a number of cammo schemes that scare me, and that’s one of them - along with the “smoke rings”…it looks great - very nicely done!
Great build, story, memento… everything. Except for the fact it would mean taking it apart… each one of those blisters would make an excellent model stand.
That is great, I love to have something like that. I for the longest time wanted a old wooden prop but the prices soon changed my mind so I ended up building one myself.
I have a wooden prop from an autogyro Dad once owned, and the shattered prop from the Piper Cub he owned that flipped over in a windstorm (nobody was near it, it just got flipped over!)
