COBI PZL P.11c Set 5742

COBI's PZL P.11c is a 1:32 model built from 320 blocks, 24.5 cm long with a 34 cm wingspan, in September 1939 markings. The propeller and ailerons move, the cockpit takes a figure printed front and back, and you can fit either two or four machine guns. The Polish chequerboards are printed on the underside of the wings. A display stand and nameplate are included. No stickers.

The wing is the point

Look at the wing from the front: it rises from the fuselage, then bends and runs out flat. That shape is a Puławski wing, named after the Polish engineer Zygmunt Puławski, and it solved a real problem.

A high-wing fighter gives the pilot good downward vision but blocks his view upward and forward — exactly where an enemy dives from. Puławski thinned the wing where it met the fuselage and lifted it, so the pilot's head sat clear of it. He could see up, forward and down.

When the P.11's predecessor appeared in 1931 it was arguably the most advanced fighter in the world, and foreign air forces came to look at it. Puławski was killed in a crash in 1931, at 30.

Eight years is a long time in aviation

By September 1939 the P.11 was an open-cockpit, fixed-undercarriage aeroplane facing Messerschmitt Bf 109s that were 150 km/h faster. Polish pilots flew them anyway and shot down somewhere around 110 German aircraft in the campaign, mostly by turning inside opponents who could not afford to slow down.

In the COBI range

Set 5751 is the PZL.23 Karaś, the Polish light bomber of the same campaign, at the same scale.

Specifications

Pieces: 320 · Figures: 1 · Scale: 1:32 · Two or four guns, your choice · No stickers
Model dimensions: 24.5 × 34 × 10.5 cm (9.6 × 13.4 × 4.1 in)