Flickr’s Dornbi has appeared here numerous times with his stunning Lego aircraft. He’s recently pictured three of his historic US Navy planes together, with the F14a Tomcat, A-6E Intruder and A-7E Corsair all faithfully recreated in grey and white bricks. There’s more to see of each at Dornbi’s photostream – click there for the full set of images.
Today is Remembrance Sunday in The Lego Car Blog’s home nation, and never has a Lego image seemed more beautifully suited.
Henrik Jensen‘s wonderful dogfight between a German Fokker Eindecker EIII and his previously featured British Airco DH2 reminds us that the First World War claimed an enormous amount of life on both sides, and was the first war where conflict rather than disease caused the majority of the loss.
The war itself was pretty pointless, yet around 6 million Allied and 4 million Axis Powers servicemen lost their lives, along with an estimated 2 million civilians. We remember them all, including those our forebears fought against.
This odd contraption is an Airco DH.2, an early First World War fighter aircraft designed by legendary aeronautical pioneer Sir Geoffrey de Havilland.
The early years of flight were dangerous ones, with poor pilot training and machines pushing the boundaries of aeronautics almost continuously. This meant a huge incident rate (and the Airco DH.2 gaining the nickname in today’s title), but once the Royal Flying Corps were familiar with the design the DH.2 proved to be more than a match for its German counterparts, being highly manoeuvrable and relatively easy to fly.
The single Lewis machine gun mounted up front originally swung from side to side, but as pilots found it easier to aim with their aircraft than the gun it became fixed to the cockpit. Behind the pilot was a French 100bhp Gnome Monosoupape nine-cylinder radial engine, mounted there in ‘pusher’ configuration as unlike the Germans the British hadn’t yet developed a synchronisation system to allow a gun to fire between spinning propeller blades.
The Airco DH.2 had a ridiculously short yet successful career, destroying 44 enemy aircraft in The Battle of the Somme. Such was the pace of development in the First World War that just a year later the arrival of new German fighters meant DH.2 was outclassed and replaced by the DH.5, which itself only lasted a single year in combat operation before the S.E.5 arrived to see out the conflict, by this time looking far more like a plane we would recognise today.
This neat mini-figure scale recreation of the Airco DH.2 comes from Henrik Jensen, and it captures the aircraft’s weirdness rather well. With such a short life-span there are no surviving original DH.2s today, so this may be as close as we’ll get to seeing one – take a look at Henrik’s photostream via the link above, or at MOCpages here.
This remarkable airplane is a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), based on the Boeing 747 airliner and pictured here piggybacking the Space Shuttle. It’s been built by Lia Chan of Flickr, who has appeared here before with his incredible Shuttle launch scene. There’s more to see of Lia’s spectacular replica of SCA NA905 on Flickr, where the album includes images of the model alongside its enormous real-life NASA counterpart shot on-location at the Houston Space Centre. Click the link above to visit the full gallery.
But, in this writer’s opinion, the most beautiful aircraft of the Second World War. This gorgeous Supermarine Spitfire comes from Mike Fifer of MOCpages, and it contains some of the most brilliantly-built colouring of any model we’ve found. It’s not just the superb camouflage you can see in these pictures either, as the underside is rather special too. Click the link above to find out why.
Uh Oh! Air Pirates! You know, pirates… but in the air! That’s about all we’ve got for this piratical airship from Ted Andes, so it’s probably best to head straight to Flickr. Alternatively, as is often the case when we don’t know what’s going on, here’s some completely unrelated illiness.
Ah Canada. The United States’ slightly boring neighbour. Home of singing-horse Celine Dion, the catchy pop of Carly Ray Jepsen, and perennial annoyance that is Justin Bieber. Fortunately they also know how to make some cool stuff up there, thanks almost entirely to transportation giant Bombardier.
Founded in the 1930s Bombardier began by making snowmobiles, and have since expanded to build ski-doos, trains, ATVs and aircraft. It’s the latter we have here, in the form of a Canadair CL-215 water-bombing amphibious plane. Designed in the late 1960s to operate at low speeds and in tricky winds, the CL-215 was sold to eleven countries for fire-fighting and search and rescue operations, with 125 units produced until the design was replaced in 1990.
This lovely replica of the Canadair CL-215 comes from previous bloggee Dornbi of Flickr and he’s captured the unusual shoulder-mounted engine configuration of the aircraft brilliantly. There’s more of the build to see at Dornbi’s photostream – click the link above to drop the world’s biggest water bomb.
Gimmie a ticket for an aeroplane
Ain’t got time to take a fast train
Lonely days are gone I’m a goin’ home
My baby has just wrote me a letter.
We don’t often see Technic aeroplanes, but this unusual creation by BrickbyBrickTechnic shows that Technic aircraft can be done very well indeed. With working ailerons, airbrakes, elevators and tail rudder, plus functioning (and suspended) landing gear, BrickbyBrick’s jet airliner includes more functionality than many Technic models of more usual subjects. Get yourself a ticket at either Flickr or Eurobricks, and you can find today’s title song by clicking here.
China’s home-grown vehicles often seem to have been ‘designed’ via a game of Chinese Whispers, starting with a respectable Western, Japanese or Korean product, and ending with a tragically distorted lookalike such as this. Or this. Or this. Or this.
Make no mistake though, whilst we’re happily mocking China’s complete disregard for copyright infringement, Chinese cars will be arriving on mass very soon, and it won’t be long before we’ll all be flying on Chinese-designed aircraft too.
In the meantime it’s the domestic market that China’s vehicle and aircraft manufacturers are serving with their cloned produce, as is the case with today’s creation. This is a Shenyang J-11B fighter, a licensed copy of the mid-’80s Soviet-designed Sukhoi Su-27 air superiority fighter, and currently in sole use by the People’s Liberation Army Air Force of China.
This spectacular Lego replica of the Shenyang J-11B comes from Flickr’s Lennart C and it’s a better copy than any of China’s cars could hope to be. There’s an opening cockpit, detailed landing gear, as well as an assortment of cloned Russian weaponry, and there’s lots more to see at Lennart’s photostream via the link above.
Or this.
Eagle-eyed readers of this blog post will have noticed that this is not a car. It is in fact a Nakajima Ki-84 ‘Hayate’ World War 2 fighter, as flown by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service in the last three years of the war. One of the fastest, most formidably armed, and highest flying fighters of the time, the Nakajima Ki-84 was a feared adversary.
Over 3,500 Ki-84’s were produced between 1943 and 1945, although towards the end of the conflict the crippling effects of the war on production meant that defects rose dramatically and quality dropped. After the Allied victory several Ki-84’s were captured, with Indonesia the People’s Republic of China operating the aircraft within their own air forces, and America using two for evaluation.
Today just one Nakajima Ki-84 ‘Hayate’ fighter survives, an ex-U.S evaluation aircraft now located in the Chiran Peace Museum in Japan. However thanks to previous bloggee and military-building specialist Daniel Siskind we now have double the number of Ki-84’s available to view.
Daniel’s superb mini-figure scale recreation of Japan’s fastest Second World War fighter is a beautifully detailed build and includes authentically replicated Imperial Japanese roundels and tail markings, as well as a custom IJA airman mini-figure shown in the first image above. See more of Daniel’s Nakajima Ki-84 ‘Hayate’ fighter and its custom mini-figure pilot on Flickr by clicking here.
The Gloster Meteor is one of this writer’s very favourite aircraft. And that’s probably the nerdiest line ever said in human history. Anyway, it is. Because look at it.
The Meteor was the Allies first jet-powered aircraft, and the only one to enter service during the Second World War. Powered by two Rolls-Royce Welland turbojet engines designed by the engineering genius Sir Frank Whittle, the meteor became the fastest aircraft of the time, breaking numerous speed and climbing records.
The Meteor was flying on the very edge what what was achievable in the 1940s, and thus hundreds of the aircraft (and the pilots that flew them) were lost to accidents, mechanical failures and fuel starvation (the Meteor could only fly for an hour at most). However, the Meteor was also fast enough to catch and destroy the V1 flying bomb in flight, and destroyed 46 German aircraft on the ground by the end of the war. The Meteor wasn’t permitted to fly over land in German occupation though, so great was the fear of the aircraft being captured and its secrets being learned.
After the war the incredible rate of jet aircraft development meant the Meteor quickly become obsolete, ending its days as a target tug, but without the Meteor’s pioneering technology it could have been many more years before jetting off on holiday became a realistic possibility for millions of people.
This beautiful recreation of a the Gloster Meteor in Royal Danish Airforce livery comes from previous bloggee Henrik Jensen, and it captures the iconic shape of the real aircraft brilliantly. There’s more to see of Henrik’s build at MOCpages and Flickr where Henrik has made the internal secrets of his model available to view. Even if you’re German.
This wonderfully weird contraption is a Northrop Grumman E-2C Hawkeye airborne early warning (AEW) aircraft, currently serving in the U.S Navy aircraft carrier fleet. First flying in 1960, the E-2 Hawkeye is not only still in service some five decades later, but is actually still in production, giving it the longest production run of any carrier-based aircraft.
The huge disc atop the Hawkeye is a 24-foot rotating radar dome equipped with long-range radar and IFF systems, the only carrier-based aircraft to possess such technology. This enormous eye/ear allows the E-2 to detect incoming threats long before they become a danger, allowing the carrier upon which it’s stationed to prepare defences.
This remarkably accurate replica of one the the U.S navy’s oddest aircraft comes from previous bloggee and TLCB Master MOCer Ralph Savelsberg aka Mad Physicist, and he’s used some absolutely genius techniques to recreate the Hawkeye’s unique shape. There’s lots more to see at Ralph’s photostream by clicking here – just know that the Hawkeye is sure to see you coming…
Full disclosure; we don’t really know the difference between sky-fi and sci-fi. One has propellors and one doesn’t maybe? Anyway, we’re sure the more professional blogs will pick these up soon so you can read a proper description there, in the meantime we’re happy just to say that they’re both rather lovely builds and that you can see more of Sylon-tw‘s ‘F-09 Trident’ (above) and Eric Teo‘s ‘Crimson Dawn’ on Flickr via the links.
The Lego Car Blog Elves are clearly in a spacey mood today, as we have no less than three sci-fi creations to share. This gives us a headache because, as regular readers will know, we’re useless with anything science-fictiony. Oh well, here goes…
First up, pictured above, is perig perig‘s ‘The Tiny Whale’, which looks like a boat, an airship and tow truck have been involved in a forceful accident. Still, it is, even to us here at TLCB, a deeply cool build, and you can see more at the link above.
Next up is this mean looking tri-pedal mech from Flickr’s Sunder_59. This TLCB writer’s Better Half has informed him that pastel colours are in, which explains why Sunder’s creation looks so good. There’s more to see at the builder’s photostream – click the link above to take a look.
And finally, something with wheels! We still don’t really know it’s for though, seeing as it’s also a sci-fi build, but if we were a mini-figure we’d love to drive it to the shops. Volker Brodkorb is the builder behind it, it’s called a ‘DooM Inc. Troop Support Vehicle’, and there’s lot more to see on Flickr via the link above.
You can see more of all three builds via the links in the text above, and normal car-related service will resume here at TLCB shortly…
This is not a car. We’re not even completely sure it’s a plane. What we are sure of is that the inside of Vince_Toulouse‘s mind must be like one of those Salvador Dalí paintings with all the melting clocks. And that his F70 Double Faucon is gloriously, heroically, beautifully, weird. Join the madness on Flickr via the link above.
