HarryTate

 

A large part of the duties of the British scout squadrons in WW1 were escorts, attempting to keep the arguably more important reconnaissance and bombing machines from getting shot down.

That means that they need something to escort, so I've made this 1:144 scale RE8, nicknamed Harry Tate by the RFC. 

It was intended as the replacement for the BE2, that had suffered so badly in the days of the Fokker Scourge, and it was certainly an improvement over that type as a fighting machine. However, the bar for improvement was pretty low, and an unaccompanied RE8 stood little chance of survival against even the most mediocre of enemy scouts.

Groups of RE8s, when attacked, would go into a mutually supporting circle, in which several of them could fire on any approaching enemy. It was better than nothing, but it was an innately defensive tactic, and of course it disrupted the work for which the type was intended — so it could be argued that that was a success for the German pilots.