Germany opened the war believing in the bomber — Guernica, Warsaw, Rotterdam, and the 1940 Blitz on British cities all announced air power's arrival. Yet the Luftwaffe was built as a tactical force to support the army, and its bombers were twin-engine mediums like the Heinkel He 111 and Junkers Ju 88, not long-range heavies. Hermann Göring never backed a four-engine strategic bomber program, and cheaper medium bombers won the budget fights. It proved a fateful gap: when the Blitz failed to break Britain, Germany had no fleet of heavy bombers to press the campaign — and the Allies, who did build one, would eventually reduce Germany's cities to rubble.

The figure stands in full flying kit — padded suit, leather helmet and goggles pushed up, parachute harness buckled across the chest, and heavy flight boots — a bomber pilot ready to walk out to his aircraft. Set him with the Luftwaffe's own fighter arm, the Fighter Pilot and the ace Adolf Galland, or turn him toward the men on the other side of the strategic-bombing story — the American Ball Turret Gunner in the heavy bombers Germany never built. An airfield diorama gives these airmen their setting.

W. Britain model 10108. 1/30 scale, matte-painted metal. Single figure — a German Luftwaffe bomber pilot in flight gear. Boxed.