Caudron-Renault C.R.714 Cyclone
| Kit: | Heller, 1/72; bought on eBay for about $3. Model finished on 2022-01-20. |
|---|---|
| Aircraft: | CA-556, N° 6, Ilmavoimat (Finnish Air Force), Summer 1940 |
The Caudron-Renault C.R.714 Cyclone was a French fighter that first flew in 1936. A total of 83 aircraft had been completed by the time Germany invaded France in 1940. Earlier, the French government had decided to donate 80 aircraft to Finland; eventually only six aircraft made it. The Finnish Air Force had a plan to assign the aircraft to LeLv 30, but the aircraft was found to be unsuitable to Finnish conditions and generally poorly suited for combat.
Construction Notes
The old Heller kit dates back to 1967. My model was built from the 1993 boxing which featured a new decal sheet (which I did not need). The kit is generally accurate but suffers from its age. I spent a lot of effort detailing the cockpit and the landing gear, as well as adding wheel wells, using Evergreen stock and Albion Alloys tubing.
Painting the model was extremely difficult. I tried to replicate the exact pattern based on photographs I had taken of this aircraft in 2006. I used the Hataka lacquers from their excellent "Early WW2 French Air Force" set (see here for more information on French camouflage colors). I also used some Tamiya acrylics for details, and finished the model off with a mixture of Testors' Dullcote and Glosscote.
Decals came from an InScale sheet (for Caudrons and Moranes) as well as from a TechMod sheet of Finnish swastikas. The InScale decals were rather thick, and for the swastikas I had to paint white circles underneath to prevent the camouflage from showing through.
Glueing a "handle" to the model makes painting a lot easier
Masked for clear coat spraying
Masked for painting the anti-slip wing walk
CA-556 in storage at Vesivehmaa, Finland
References Used
This aircraft type is well documented. Particularly excellent references are 2, 4, 7, and 9 (Finnish edition of the Mushroom "Finnish Fighter Colors" book), as well as - of course - 12.
- Air International September 1975
- Aircraft Described #204: Caudron-Renault C.R.714 (Aero Modeller large scale plans)
- Les Avions Caudron - Tome II (Hauet); Collection Historie de l'Aviation 12; Éditions Lela Presse 2002
- Les chasseurs Caudron - CR.714 et dérivés (Comas & Ledet); Hors-série Avions 11; Éditions Lela Presse
- Le GC 1/145 - Un groupe polonais dans la campagne de France (Belcarz); Hors-série Air Magazine 6
- l'Aviation Française de 1939 à 1942 - Chasse, bombardement, reconnaisance et observation - Tome 1: d'Amiot à Curtiss (Breffort & Jouineau); Planes and Pilots / Avions et pilotes 7; Histoire & Collections 2004
- Morane-Saulnier M.S.406 & Caudron C.714 (Keskinen et al); Suomen Ilmavoimien historia 4; Tietoteos 1975
- Polish Aces of World War 2 (Gretzyngier & Matusiak); Osprey Aircraft of the Aces 21; Osprey 1998
- Suomen ilmavoimien hävittäjät - Historia, maalaukset ja merkinnät 1939-1945 (Stenman & Hołda); Koala-kustannus 2015
- Suomen ilmavoimien värit 1918-2013 (Rönkkö et al); Apali 2013
- Suomen Siivet Marras-joulukuu 1973
- My own photographs taken of CA-556 in storage at Vesivehmaa in 2006
