The Soccer War 1969

How cool is that!

I've been thinking of ways to squeeze extra mileage out of the jungle flight stands I've made, without starting anything too long winded, time consuming or expensive. I thought of Thud Ridge but that would be too much to do. I also thought of doing an imaginations 'Air War AK-47' based on the fictitious nations in my AK47 Republic games, but that was too random. I then remembered a Bag the Hun article on the so-called Soccer War (or as I prefer to call it The Football War) between El Salvador and Honduras in an old Too Fat Lardies Special, so I dug it out and took a closer look. 

The article written by Tom Ballou is in the 2007 Xmas Special and includes a brief overview of the two air forces involved, an explanation of the key events of the 100 hour long conflict, statistics for the different aircraft and three scenarios. This looked to be just what I was after; a handful of interesting aircraft with funky camo schemes, some dogfighting and ground attack missions and some ready made scenarios, all set over the steamy jungles of Central America. I then located another article online by an American mercenary F-51 Cavalier pilot, which confirmed my initial impressions:

 https://www.flightjournal.com/the-soccer-war/

I've just ordered this from Amazon

There's even a book that I can get hold of called 'The 100 Hour War' so that, in theory, I could develop my own scenarios, either factual or based on other possibilities. As far as aircraft are concerned, with the exception of some T-28 Trojans and the need for some conversion work to produce a few Cavalier Mustangs, I have all the 1/600th models I need already left over from other projects including Corsairs, Mustangs, Texans and Dakotas. I could even do this in 1/285th scale as I have a few Raiden Miniatures P-51D's and Scotia Collectair F4U4 Corsairs too, although that would really defeat the object of the exercise!

See what I mean about 'funky' camouflage!

I've sorted out the relevant models and set them aside for a rainy weekend at some point, with a view to either using Bag the Hun first edition for this or a simple Wings at War conversion. In a way, the conflict is very similar to the set up in Desert Spitfires, just switching Egyptians for Hondurans and Israelis for Salvadoreans, give or take a few tweaks to reflect the specifics of the Soccer War. I think it would be an easy task to translocate one for the other, certainly less work than that required for the Alto Cenepa Wings at War variant. It's got me interested to say the least but I have other things to do for the moment, so it will have to wait a bit longer?