Our Friend Mark Attrill, RAF Wing Commander (retired), author of many aviation books, presently Lecturer at the Baltic Defence College (Tartu, Estonia) and a dedicated modeller, sent us the illustrated story of his remarkable modelling project.
We invite you to read and watch!
Mark Attrill wrote us:
The Baltic Defence College located in Tartu, Estonia, hosted its annual Baltic History Conference on 31 October, which proved to be the ideal venue to complete a joint project that Command Sergeant Major Alvydas Tamosiunas (Lithuanian Air Force) and I have been working on for 8 months. The project involved the ‘re-purposing’ of one of my old RAF No.1 Uniforms to replicate that which would have been worn by Flight Lieutenant Romualdas Marcinkus, the only Lithuanian to serve with the Royal Air Force during World War II.
Lithuanian in the RAF
After serving with the pre-war Lithuanian Air Force, Marcinkus briefly served with the French Air Force before escaping to Great Britain where he joined the RAF and served as a night fighter pilot with No.1(Fighter) Squadron, flying the Hawker Hurricane IIC. He scored two victories in 1941 but was shot down over the English Channel on 12 February 1942 during an ill-fated attempt to support the chase of the Scharnhorst battleship and its escort during the ‘Channel Dash’.
Zestrzelony Hurricane Mk IIC BD949 Romualdasa Marcinkusa
“The Great Escape”
Marcinkus was made a POW and was sent to the infamous Stalag Luft III, which featured in the 1960s film ‘The Great Escape’. Romualdas was appointed to the escape committee, by virtue of his fluency in German and photographic memory – he acquired and memorised the German and Polish Railway timetables in order to assist his fellow escapees. He was in the first group to escape on 25 March 1944 and he and three colleagues managed to get as far as Poznań in Western Poland before they were captured on 28 March 1944. All were executed the following day on the personal orders of Adolf Hitler.
Romualdas Marcinkus commemorated
It was, therefore my great pleasure to present my, now surplus, No.1 Uniform and SD Hat, suitably altered to reflect that worn by Flt Lt Marcinkus in 1942, together with a hand-built Arma Hobby 1:48 scale replica of his Hawker Hurricane IIC to Dr Laima Buceviciute of the Lithuanian War Museum at the culmination of the first day of the Baltic History Conference, as a symbol of the close ties between our two Air Forces that persist to this day with NATO’s ongoing Baltic Air Policing mission.
Romualdas Marcinkus – pre-war photo
Model Gallery
Presented by Mark Attrill to the Lithuanian War Museum, the model of Romualdas Marcinkus’ Hawker Hurricane Mk IIC BD949 fighter marked with the squadron code JX-J was made using an Arma Hobby kit in 1/48 scale.
Mark Attrill’s model certainly reminds you of something. That’s because it is very similar to the boxart aircraft of the Arma Hobby kit featuring a plane from the same unit, RAF No. 1 Squadron, flown by the famous Czech ace Karel Kuttelwascher. It was the photo of the Romualdas Marcinkus’ aircraft that helped us reconstruct the final appearance of the Kuttelwascher’s fighter.
More about Romualdas Marcinkus
More about Romualdas Marcinkus and the “Great Escape” you can read in Wikipedia:
See also:
Najskuteczniejszy nocny pilot Hurricane – Karel Kuttelwascher
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