COBI Morane-Saulnier MS.406 Set 5724

COBI's Morane-Saulnier MS.406 is a 1:32 model built from 317 blocks, in the markings of the Polish pilots who flew it from France in 1940. The propeller turns, the canopy opens for the included pilot figure with oxygen mask, the landing gear retracts and the ailerons move. A display stand and a nameplate are included. All markings are printed; no stickers.

Switzerland kept them until 1959

In France the MS.406 was the most numerous fighter of 1940 and a disappointment — slower than a Bf 109E by a wide margin, and the campaign was over in six weeks.

Switzerland had bought a licence and did something different with it. Swiss engineers reworked the aircraft as the D-3800 and then the D-3801, with a more powerful Hispano-Suiza engine built locally, a better propeller and a redesigned cooling system. The result was a genuinely competent fighter.

And Switzerland used it. Both sides violated Swiss airspace repeatedly during the war, and Swiss pilots in these aircraft intercepted them — shooting down German aircraft in 1940 in engagements that led to formal German threats, and later intercepting Allied bombers straying off course. A neutral country defended its neutrality with a French design the French had given up on.

The last Swiss examples flew until 1959, nineteen years after the aircraft was written off as obsolete everywhere else.

The Polish markings

Polish pilots who had escaped through Romania and Hungary formed units in France in 1940 and flew MS.406s there. Poland had ordered the type before the war; the aircraft never arrived in time.

In the COBI range

Set 5734 is the Dewoitine D.520, the better French fighter that arrived too late and in too few numbers.

Specifications

Pieces: 317 · Figures: 1 pilot · Scale: 1:32 · Display stand and nameplate · No stickers