According to Douglas Adams, its a swear word.

I am of course speaking of Belgium

As alluded to in an earlier post, I quite like the underdog when playing WW1 Dogfights, and there can be no greater underdog then good old "Plucky Little Belgium"

Belgium was definitely the runt of the litter as far as WW1 Entente air-forces went. The problem was that she had almost no aircraft industry of her own, and half the country was overrun by the Germans in short order. Belgium therefore had to scrape and scratch her Aviation Militaire Belge together from what she could obtain from her allies, and as we shall see, this wasn't always top notch. I have a small but growing Belgian contingent for Wings of War.

I'll concentrate on the two seaters first before moving on to the "interesting" subject of fighters

Here's my first Belgian - a Caudron GIV of Escadrille C74. This was an interesting unit in that it was a joint Franco Belgian squadron organised to perform photo recce duties. The model is a 3D print from Shapeways and the decals are from Dom Skelton, crew from Peter Pig. The Caudron GIV was a fairly useful if slow and vulnerable plane. Probably more at home on "Catch the Pigeon" than the Western Front, but lack of suitable replacements meant this obsolete design served a long time in front line service.

Next is another "pusher", this time a Farman F40. This is "Medusa" which served with the Aviation Militaire, again on recce duties. Several Belgian F40s were painted in individual colour schemes similar to the nose art associated with WW2 US bombers including skulls, Chaplain, some nudes and Medusa. Being a bit photogenic there are several pics of these available on line. Another Shapeways 3d print (actually the first I bought and painted). Like the GIV the F40 was overtaken by events and was quickly obsolete, but served on in Belgian service for a long time simply because there was no available replacement.