Diorama (Eng)

© Benoît Paquet

OUR AMBITION

To pay tribute to the airmen who disappeared in our region is a great and nice experience. To go even farther, the ABSA 39/45 has reached a partnership with the Châteaubriant Model Kit Club which, thanks to the contribution of numerous model makers throughout France, has started a project of a diorama representing the English Oakington RAF base (near Cambridge), to exhibit the model kits (scale 1:48°) of the aircrafts fallen in Brittany and Loire-Atlantique.

Exhibition in Châteaubriant (2016)
© Benoît Paquet

The project, named "AA", has convinced various model kit makers everywhere in France ; they built numerous English and some French aircrafts and started the American ones today. The German aircrafts should come later. These model kit makers, motivated by this duty of remembrance, communicate through a web forum, FIGHTERS, in a section dedicated to the project.

Model kit  exhibition in Châteaubriant (May, 2017)
© Benoît Paquet

The combination of the ambitions of these two associations led them to propose the founding, at Châteaubriant or somewhere in Brittany, a permanent space of memory : an exhibition space for the air memory in which the visitors would find the 1:48-scale diorama, excavated parts of aircrafts of various objects, and finally and above all the history of these disappeared airmen, with numerous documents and photos.

The diorama at the "Grenier de l'aviation" (the "Aviation attic") in Nantes
© Benoît Paquet

While waiting for the founding of this space, both associations operate regularly temporary exhibitions. In the meantime the diorama is partially exhibited at the "Grenier de l'aviation" (the "aviation attic"), the nice and exciting small museum in Nantes, which has the ambition to enhance the aeronautical heritage of Nantes and the region (website and Facebook).

The "Grenier de l'Aviation" (the "Aviation attic") in Nantes
© Benoît Paquet

THE MODEL KITS OF THE MEMORY

You'll find here below some of the nicest model kits built for the project "AA", with the name of the pilot or the crew, the location and date of the fall of the aircraft, and a link to the section dedicated to the story of the aircraft.

Hawker HURRICANE Mk IIc
BN231 (code ZY-E ) 
27^th June, 1942, "Toul ar Lann"
Saint Agathon (22)


Pilot
Warrant Officer Allan Rene WHITE

The story 

Northrop P-61 A-5 'Black Widow'
#42-5545 
26^th August, 1944, Riantec (56)

Pilot
1st Lt. Nelson D. WILLIS

The story