Polish PZL.23 Karas painted up

And this is how the model ended up being painted. Having looked around, most sources show the airplane being painted in tan colors with a bright undercarriage.

The windows are inspired by another painter who painted up this model for his Romanian army. I thought it looked pretty cool and since the Poles got most use of their bombers in the southern regions of Poland I saw it fitting to have a mountains reflect on the windows and a Tatra region themed base.

The Poles had some 250 of these light bombers, and roughly 120 of the medium bomber PZL.37 Los. Not all took part in the campaign, as some were stuck in flight schools, while others were being on repairs. But an estimated 120 PZL.23 Karas took part in the fighting.

The persistent myth about Polish air force being wiped out by German bombing raids is false (just like a lot of other myths still plaguing the Polish campaign). The Poles knew an attack was coming and just prior to the invasion managed to move most of their airplanes to hidden airfields. There was however much confusion and bad communication between the airfields and the armies, and Polish high command insisted that the bombers should target German columns which led to a high casualty ratio of Polish bomber squadrons. Meanwhile, most of Poland’s 200 fighter aircraft of PZ.7 and PZ.11 model were ordered to protect towns and Warsaw in particular from German bombers.

This further exposed the Polish bombers since there was little to none escorts following them on missions.

The PZL.23 came in two versions, an older A model and a modernized B model. The B model were a few kilometers slower than a German Stuka bomber. The PZL had a crew of 3 and was armed with 2 rear facing light machineguns, one front facing heavy machinegun and could be armed with both anti-personnel and regular heavy bombs. On my own model I attached the regular bombs, such a payload was made up of 6x 100kg and 2x50kg bombs.

Dimensions of the PZL.23 were 9.7 meters length, 14 meters wingspan and 3.3 meters height. Like all Polish airplanes it could take off and land on simple dirt strips. An interesting detail was that it lacked a rear wheel on the tail, instead it had a tail skid.

In the September Campaign v.2.0., 3 out of the 13 Polish lists are able to include this bomber for support.