Eduard Fokker E.V
Built about 2006, the very nice updated Eduard Fokker E.V "Parasol". We now know the lozenge isn't the right color (thank you very much WNW for your outstanding research!), but it still looks very nice. Amazing how aircraft [...]
According to my mother, the first word I said was "airplane" ("oh-pane") at around 11 months of age when a P-38 flew over the park we were in. I've had a love affair with airplanes and the people who are involved with airplanes ever since, which has become my career as an aviation historian and author.
I built my first model, a Strombecker all-wood P-80 (that dates me!) at age 6, after watching my father build other wood models for me. I quickly graduated to plastic models when I found Mr. Twist's Fix-It Shop on South Gaylord Street in Denver, with its corner shelves full of wondrous kit boxes. I built my first biplane (a Hawk Models Nieuport 17 - still available from Testors) before I was old enough to know that "biplanes are hard." With time out in the 1960s after graduating from high school for the Navy and college and "The Sixties" I returned to the hobby in 1970 and haven't left since.
I became a screenwriter in Hollywood in the 1980s, after first getting published as an aviation author in the 1970s in Air Enthusiast Quarterly. I love the fact that William Green, who wrote the first "serious aviation book" (All The World's Aircraft 1954) that I got my father to buy for me was the first person to publish me. I've flown the back seat of an F-4E Phantom for an article on the Wild Weasels in Air Force Magazine, and had 20 minutes stick time in Jim Nissen's 1918 Curtiss JN-4D Jenny back in 1979 for an article in Plane and Pilot, and been in everything in between over the past 47 years. When I worked in politics in Sacramento during the 1970s, I was a member of a club that flew Stearman N747JR (we called ourselves in as "Boeing 747 Junior") and got around 100 hours in that fun machine.
I'm one of the original members here of iModeler, and consider it the best model club on the planet.
Author of "Fabled Fifteen: The Pacific War Odyssey of Carrier Air Group 15", "Pacific Thunder: the Pacific War from Wake island to Leyte Gulf," "Tidal Wave: From Leyte Gulf to Tokyo Bay," "The Frozen Chosen: The First Marine Division and the Battle of Chosin Reservoir," "Holding The Line: the Naval Air Campaign in Korea," and "MiG Alley: The US Air Force in Korea - 1950-53" which will be released on November 26.
My most recent book, "Clean Sweep: VIII Fighter Command Against the Luftwaffe 1942-45" will be published by Osprey on May 23.
My wife of 27 years finally escaped Parkinson's on February 20 and sailed west to the unknown land beyond the sunset where she once again paints seascapes with her friends, her cats.
You can order all of them here: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Thomas+McKelvey+Cleaver&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
Falcon 1/48 Spitfire F.R.XVIII – vacuform
This was done about 2004. The Falcon 1/48 F.R. XVIII vacuform. Still the most accurate Spitfire XIV/XVIII in 1/48. I used a resin cockpit (something I had, nobody can really tell the detail differences between Spitfire cockpits in 1/48 [...]
Special Hobby 1/32 Nieuport 11
This is the Special Hobby 1/32 kit of the Nieuport 11 "Bebe", done OOB. It's the only model out there in this scale of the airplane, and looks very nice sitting next to any WNW kit.
1/32 Trumpeter P-47C-2 Thunderbolt
Trumpeter's P-47D razorback modified to a P-47C-2 (mostly involved getting the lower two cowling flaps removed and replaced as cowling), done as my friend Steve Pisanos' airplane circa late July/early August 1943. (Thanks to Mike Grant [...]
President Eisenhower’s “Columbine III” Heller 1/72 Super Connie
I personally don't think there was a more beautiful airliner ever made than the Constellation, and I like the Super Constellation with its long lean look to be the best of the bunch. Doing it in simple natural metal, as President [...]
1/32 Hasegawa/Alley Cat Ki.100-1b
In March 1945, B-29 crews began reporting the appearance of a previously-unknown type of Japanese Army fighter appearing in squadron strength at altitude over Japan. The new radial-engined fighter had superb maneuverability and high [...]
1/48 Revell (Pro-Modeler) SB2C-3 Helldiver
Another "book project creates a model project" from TCWorld. I am currently writing what is becoming a book that looks like it will be "definitive" - "Fabled Fifteen: Air Group 15 in the Pacific War." Just [...]
Roden 1/48 AT-28D
Frequently a model project will lead to a writing project in TCWorld (and vice-versa). I got the Roden T-28 kit (the first release), and was talking to Ross McMillan of Scale Aircraft Conversions about it, and Ross said he hoped someone [...]
Another 1/32 SPAD
This time the Roden SPAD VII with Pheon Decals to do Raoul Lufbery's airplane from S.124, the Lafayette Escadrille. A good kit worth checking out.
Frank Luke’s SPAD XIII – Hobbycraft 1/32
There is no pilot of World War I in any air force who more fits the mythology of the "Great Flying Ace of the Great War" than The Arizona Cowboy, Frank Luke. The working-class kid with no education around a bunch of upper-class [...]
