Roden 1/48th Sopwith 1.B1 Strutter By Matt Bittner

History

The 1.B1 French version of the Sopwith Strutter was developed as a light bomber. It could hold six bombs internally and was crewed by one. The French versions of the Sopwith Strutter outnumbered the British versions by quite a large margin.

I'm not going to go into a large history of the type, instead concentrating on the 1.B1 itself.

The Kit

The 1/48th Roden Sopwith 1.B1 Strutter appears to be the last in the Roden Strutter line. It consists of 48 injected molded parts for the 1.B1 although there are spares, since Roden created sprues common to all of the Strutters. The kit also comes with a fret of photoetch consisting of 37 pieces. However, not all the photoetch will be used as this too is common amongst all versions of Roden's Strutter. There are decals for two schemes - one flying with SOP 107 (which most photos show after capture by the Germans) and the other flying with SOP 111. Both machines are finished overall in a single color. Which I will deal with inside the text of this review.

The model is very well done although I have heard a few complaints about the upper turtledeck after the fuselage halves are assembled. Just something to watch for.

First I'll deal with the plusses of the model. Roden has correctly molded the exhaust channel under the cowl (which is a separate part), the "up sweep" of the turtledeck directly in front of the horizontal tail, along with the area under the horizontal tail that gives the horizontal tail its characteristic sit. Kudos to Roden for catching these - all not present on the Toko 1/72nd version of the 1.B1 (except for the exhaust channel).

Now for the items in error. The separate turtledeck has the stringers sitting too close to the cockpit - remove between 2 and 3 mm if you're that pedantic. Note that the Datafile drawings are in error when it comes to the 1.B1. The best drawings for the 1.B1 are the ones found in the FMP book French Aircraft of the First World War. In addition, Roden has you mount the photoetch representation of the side bomb doors in the wrong place. They have you putting them 28mm back from the front of the kit - resting on the last, molded-in "stringer" detail. In fact, they should be on the second-to-last "stringer", which is actually 24mm from the front of the fuselage. Again, it's best to consult the FMP drawings for the best placement of these doors.

While Roden doesn't include a full cockpit, if they did it might have been in error. The 1.B1 insides are nothing at all like the other Strutters, as shown in the accompanying photograph. One distinctive area - and one that will probably be seen even with the top wing covering the cockpit - is the bomb release levers. These should be fashioned out of scratch material.

Now on to the coloring. It has been found out recently that single-color French Strutters (regardless if they were 1.B1s, 1.B2s or 1.A2s) were in fact aluminum doped. I won't go into all the references in this article (I'm working on another article for publication at a later time) but note that one of the references is an actual "offical" Sopwith military handbook. Plus if you look at the photos of actual, in service, single-color Strutters there is a definite sheen not found on British CDL machines.

Conclusion

While 1/48th is not my scale, I wanted to address how this could be built into a "proper" 1.B1 Strutter. I've done a lot of research into this matter trying to fix the 1/72nd Toko and Flashback kits. In addition, the latest information coming to us from Memorial Flight (who are working on restoring a 1.A2 Strutter) shows that single-color French Strutters were in fact aluminum-doped over all fabric surfaces. Most of these discrepancies within the Roden kit is not Roden's fault, per se. Since the aluminum-doped realization is more recent, and the errors in the Datafile in regards to the drawings of the 1.B1, no one can truly fault Roden for most of these errors. However, the lack of yellow/orange in the "serpent" of the SOP 107 decals has been known for quite some time. (The image on the right is a scan of the Toko 1/72nd decals.) Probably just an oversight on their part. So, even with these discrepancies the Roden Sopwith 1.B1 Strutter is still highly recommended.

My thanks to Roden and Squadron Shop for the review samples.