Le Petit Eclair" Le coureur de Caudron C.450

By Caz Dalton

Image 01 Image 02 Image 03

History of the Aircraft Modeled

The French Avions Caudron firm began as a successful aircraft manufacturer in 1910. During World War I they produced a series of trainer and "battle plane" aircraft for the French military.

In 1932 Avions Caudron hired Marcel Riffard, who was to achieve a distinguished career in the design of racing aircraft, light-touring monoplanes, two-engine light transports, and high speed aircraft. His career culminated with the Caudron C.700 series of light fighter aircraft, which were developed from the C.450 and C.460 series of racing aircraft.

In all there were three C.460 racers built (nos. 6907, 6908, and 6909) and one C.450 (no. 6910). The C.450 differed from the C.460s in that it was designed with a full-spatted fixed undercarriage, whereas the C.460s were designed with retractable undercarriage. It was noted in the instruction's reference that the C.460s raced with fixed undercarriages during 1934 due to hydraulic problems in the retractable gear system. C.460 number 6907 was the first to operate with full retractable undercarriage on December 25, 1934, when it set a new land speed record of 314.319 miles per hour. All C.460s had fully operable retractable undercarriages during the 1935-36 seasons of racing, winning the 1935 Coupe Deutsch de la Meurthe, and shocking the Americans during 1936 with wins in both the Greve Trophy and Thompson Trophy events.

Image 04

The model I built represents the single C.450 with fixed undercarriage (I guess I just have a passion for spats). This aircraft won the 1934 and 1936 Coupe Deutsch events, beating out its retractable siblings in both events (in 1934 the C.460s were hampered by the fixed undercarriage and only 6909 finished in third place and in 1936 only 6907 and 6908 were committed to the Coupe Deutsch event with 6909 committed to American races). My model represents the 1936 C.450 Coupe Deutsch winner, in that it has both the ventral and port side oil coolers, plus, I came to find out through modeling buddies, larger exhaust stubs. It averaged 250.116 miles per hour in winning the event. The plaque's title "LE PETIT ÉCLAIR" means "LITTLE LIGHTNING".

Additions, Modifications, etc:

Interior

The interior was pretty spartan for 1/32 scale, but so was the actual aircraft. I scratch-built the instrument panel using the kit's placard and attaching bezels cut from Waldron-punched sheet styrene. I used a photocopy of the instrument panel decal as a template to size my bezels and their placement. I added seat belts and shoulder harnesses from a Tom's Modelworks' photo-etched sheet for French World War I aircraft. These were painted Gunze Sail Color, with the latches painted silver and the holes in the shoulder harnesses simply cleaned out with an X-Acto #11 blade to reveal the brass as grommets. I added a piece on fine wire to the air bottle on the starboard side. A Waldron-punched disk of white trim film and Reheat Model instrument decal were applied to the control cylinder located between the control stick and the rudder pedals. I cut a bulkhead from sheet styrene and cemented it to the front of the cockpit flooring to seal off the empty space between there and the engine bulkhead.

Image 05

Engine

The kit only gives you one cylinder with the block and pushrods separate. I wish a full six-cylinder engine had been done with this kit, as it would have been neat to have opened up one of the engine covers and shown a fully plumbed Renault six. Alas it was not to be and I chose the easy route and assembled the engine as per instruction and attached it to its bulkhead. I did replace the two pushrods with new ones constructed from styrene rod and tube (the kit pieces looked too square after sanding the mold seams).

Image 06

Exterior

The exterior had raised lines notating the location of the retractable gear bays for those that would wish to build a C.460. In fact, any one of the C.460s or the different year variations of the C.450 can be built, as decals are provided for all. However, one must do lots of cutting, filing, and sanding to do so. I again chose the easy route, as all I had to remove was these raised lines, and they were sanded away in less than two minutes. In doing the 1936 version of the racer I did not have to sand away the port side oil cooler either.

I wanted to be able to cement the fixed wheel spats together and add the wheels in the final assembly to avoid tedious masking. I cut the interior pegs for the wheel from each of the four spat halves and drilled holes to accept .025 rod in the final assembly, as this was the proper sized rod for the holes in the wheel centers. I painted the interior of the spat halves light ghost gray and assembled the halves sans wheels. This also enabled me to clean up the wheel openings, which would have been nearly impossible had the wheel been in place. The spat's seams were cleaned up with sandpaper and set aside to be painted as a sub-assembly along with the fuselage, canopy, wheels, and prop spinner.

The holes for the exhausts were marked on the interior starboard fuselage half and had to be drilled out. I drilled mine to accept exhausts done with .035 styrene rod, that was drilled out slightly and reamed with a cone-shaped cutting bit in a pin vise. I chose the styrene rod over styrene tubing, because I could heat and bend it much better than the tube, which wanted to flatten in the bend.

Image 07

Painting and decaling

Interior

The kit states that the cockpit interior, engine bay, wheel bays, and spatted wheel interiors were painted a very light gray. I used light ghost gray (FS 36375), as no specific shade was called out and I could find no further reference. The instrument panel was painted semi-gloss black after the scratch-built bezels were attached. Instrument gauges were done with Waldron-punched disks of white trim film and Reheat Model 1/48 scale instrument decals (1/32 scale gauges looked too big when compared to the kit's somewhat out-of-register instrument panel decal). After the decals had dried, the panel was given a coat of clear flat. When this dried, I brushed the bezels in semi-gloss clear and gave the instrument faces a drop of FUTURE.

The interior flap control lever and various crooks and bends were given treatment with a .005 tech pen loaded with india ink. Other items such as the rudder pedal foot areas, the control cylinder, and bottom and top of the control stick were painted semi-gloss black. The control stick handle was given a light brushing of Gunze Tire Black, followed by clear flat. The air bottle was painted medium green. I added a few data placards from Reheat Models Data Placard decal in 1/48 scale to the control cylinder, air bottle, and engine block front.

Engine

Absolutely nothing fancy here. The entire engine block, cylinder and pushrod assembly was painted semi-gloss black. I gave the cylinder a coat of clear flat and a light brushing of powdered pencil graphite. The two pushrods were hand painted bright silver. The engine bulkhead was simply painted flat black.

The propeller was cleaned up and polished before painting the rear flat black. Any overspray on the front was polished away before masking the rear and painting the remaining areas bright silver. While the mask was still on, I lightly polished the dried silver with SNJ silver powder and gave the prop an overspray of clear gloss.

Exterior

I masked the clear canopy areas with high tack painter's mask tape, using templates cut from photocopies given in the kit's instructions. The canopy interior was totally masked with medium tack masking tape, as I would paint the canopy piece separate of the airframe. Engine and cockpit openings were masked with index card stock, cut and press fit into place. The canopy and airframe were first painted light ghost gray to serve as interior color and primer on the canopy and primer on the airframe.

The instructions stated that C.460 (no. 6909) was painted midnight blue when it raced in the Greve and Thompson Trophy event, but that all C.460s and the lone C.450 were a lighter shade of blue in the European Coupe Deutsch events, however, no specific shade could be determined. I speculated that like their government-backed Grand Prix autos of the day, the racing planes would have been painted French blue and used TAMIYA Gloss Blue (X4) on all external assemblies with that in mind. This paint had to be thinned dramatically in order to spray it through my Model Master airbrush (I used about 60% Polly-Scale thinner on the final third coat).

The decals sheet in the kit was extensive, giving all the racing numbers, tailplane motifs, and fuselage stripes for any race that either of the four planes participated in. I felt guilty again in choosing the 1936 Coupe Deutsch winner, as it did not feature the fuselage stripes and the number was a simple wide rectangular number one. The decals went on wonderfully and had to be cut only in the rudder recesses and they were also opaque enough for my taste. The yellow disk was punched from yellow trim film decal with a Waldron punch, two layers being required to achieve enough opacity. This simply denoted the pilot and yellow was Yves Lacombe's color.

Image 08

Bare-metal foil was applied to the ventral and port side oil coolers. These received a rather heavy wash of india ink, which I allowed to dry a little before buffing the coolers with a Dremel Mini-Mite tool and buffing attachment on very low speed. I applied ink washes to the control surface recesses with the tech pen and india ink before applying two finish coats of clear gloss.

The pilot figure was added as an afterthought. While plunging through my skeletons in the attic, I came across the old Monogram kit of the F3F-3 and low and behold, the 1/32 scale figure looked like it would do for the Caudron. The figure was primed in light ghost gray and hand painted with acrylics using ink and pastels to shadow and highlight it before a finish coat of clear flat. The flight helmet, jacket, and flying boots were given a brushing of semi-gloss clear. The goggle lens was painted bright silver, followed by two coats of thinned TAMIYA Smoke.

After removing the canopy masks it was polished with Meguire's Mirror Glaze #3 and given a coat of FUTURE on the interior and exterior. It was the last item attached to this easy little kit and broke up the model block I was undergoing with the time-consuming task of assembling my Shturmovic, but that's another story.

© Caz Dalton

Related Content

This article was published on Wednesday, July 20 2011; Last modified on Saturday, May 14 2016