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Anyone who’s a Beatles fan will be familiar with the term ‘dark horse’ attributed to George Harrison whose talents blossomed late in the Beatles’ career with the Abbey Road album. A dark horse is a previously lesser-known person or thing that emerges to prominence in a situation, especially in a competition involving multiple rivals or a contestant that on paper should be unlikely to succeed but yet still might. (Wikipedia) In our hobby, the ICM FIAT CR.42 is just that. Released without much fanfare two years ago, the Falco was obscured by its ‘rival’ the Gladiator but nevertheless became a modellers’ favourite in internet forums especially among beginners at large scale biplanes. Now hot on the heels of our friends @Fanes @spook @Dpgsbody55 and some others, here’s my take on the FIAT biplane with a nod to my host country: Belgium. In a nutshell, in September 1939, Belgian authorities ordered 34 CR.42 from FIAT. On March 6, the first of 30 planes arrived in Belgium still carrying Italian camouflage, to be assembled. They were assigned the serials R-1 to R-30 and were attributed to the IIe Groupe de Chasse between escadrilles 3/II and 4/II whose pilots began to convert in their new mounts. Two months later, on May 10 the Wermacht launched its attack against the Low Countries and Belgium. The nearly obsolete Fiat were pitted against the vastly superior Bf 109E. All the CR.42 of the 4/II were destroyed on the ground. The remaining squadron retreated to France and surrendered to the Wermacht after Belgium asked Germany for an armistice on June 28 1940. Thus ended the brief life of the Belgian FIAT. It was almost 4 months after the Belgians took delivery of their first Fiat. For a detailed account of the short combat life of the CR.42 in Belgian service, click HERE For the inventory photos of the CR.42 in Belgian service, check out the excellent Daniel Brackx’s BELGIAN WINGS. The familiar ICM kit A modern colorized version Since there are already a few detailed articles about the building of this kit, I ‘d like to concentrate on the camouflage and the painting of this model. There are quite a few period photographs of the Belgian FIAT as one can discover on the BELGIAN WINGS site. Nevertheless they all are in monochrome. There are a few controversies about the colours of the camouflage. Sure we all know they came in ‘Italian camouflage’ but which one? as it’s a VERY complex subject as we will find out. Hopefully some connoisseurs will chime in. Thank you for your commentaries and your invaluable input. Until next time, Cheers, Quang

My new book on the history of Dark Olive Drab and Neutral Gray camouflages arrived yesterday. If you're interested, it's now on Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=9780996919920 International sellers should have their copies soon too. Hope you enjoy! Cheers, Dana

Does anyone have any information on what these planes were painted? I've seen so many different interpretations, but looking at the pictures this is an over-paint or distemper and you can see dark paint under this colour on leading edges etc. But this paint appears to be lighter that the Khaki pants worn by the crew and there is a credible case to be made that there is no different under colour.