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Luft 46 Models is all about - and only about - Luft 46 models. To expound on that a bit, this site contains reviews and lists of the various model kits which render Luft 46 subjects.
Luft 46 - shorthand for Luftwaffe '46 - is the term which covers the advanced aircraft designs which the Germans came up with during World War Two. Hardly any of these designs ever became much more than paper studies and hardly any of those even got as far as a prototype stage before the war ended. Thus, the majority of these designs fall in to the "What if?" category of things "which could have been..." As a result, this subject has drawn an increasing amount of attention over this past decade. Numerous books and reports have come out which have developed and detailed the subject. Hand in hand with the interest in this subject has come an interest in building models of these aircraft.
At first these kits were exceedingly rare, not terribly sophisticated, and rather expensive. As the popularity of the Luft 46 genre increased so too did the quantity and quality of the model kits which rendered the subject. Over the past few years there has been an absolute boom in the number of model kit manufacturers who have discovered the allure of the Luft 46 genre and they have also seen the profit potential of releasing kits for Luft 46 modelers. What had been an esoteric and arcane subject known to but a few individuals and an even fewer number of modelers has now blossomed into the mainstream of the model industry with even major kit manufacturers like Revell and Hasegawa releasing kits on the subject.
Several years ago, William Moore created the first version of this website. It was an attempt to catalog some of the numerous Luft 46 kits which then hitting the market as well as to provide a place for reviews of those kits. The subject was so new and the kit manufacturers so unfamiliar that such a site was very much needed. Over the next few years, the luft46models.com site moved from one hosting service to the next as it grew in size and usage. Finally, after serving the Luft 46 modeling community for several years, William could no longer afford to maintain the site and he had to shut it down.
A chance encounter with Mr. Moore via a shared discussion thread on the What If? site's discussion board is what brought the site back up. I had some time on my hands as well as some familiarity with running a website. I asked, and William was happy enough to hand over all his site's content - provided I do it justice! And that's where things stand today. I'm fleshing this out as fast as my work schedule allows and look to soon have this site fully up and running with all the content it had when last it saw the Web. Once that goal is achieved I'll then look to expand and update the site with more recent reviews and such. So, keep on checking back and please drop me a line with your comments.
Thanks,
Madoc Pope
Webmaster
Luft46models.com
madoc @ luft 46 models .com
One note on what this site is not about, i.e. revisionism. World War Two was the most destructive thing to ever befall human civilization. Every day that war dragged on it caused the deaths of thousands - if not tens of thousands - of human beings. This, through the direct lethality of combat as well as through the deaths resulting from the starvation, disease and exposure that naturally accompanies an all out war that runs on for several years. By the time the war came to its close in late '45, the Earth's human population had been significantly reduced in number. If you've any doubt of that, just ask either the Russians or the Chinese. As such, any alternative universe in which the war had continued even a day longer than it did would be a dark place indeed as it would have had a higher butcher's bill than ours.
This site, though it celebrates and expounds upon the subject of the Luftwaffe's projected designs, is not in any way a celebration of Nazism nor of any wish that World War Two have lasted even a minute longer than it actually did. These aircraft designs are fascinating things and the models made of them equally so. But the actual war itself, and the ideologies which spawned it, are not something which rational folk would hope to have continued.
So, please feel free to enjoy what this site contains and do so without worry that it celebrating or endorsing any of the evils from that period in history. Studying the past is not an evil thing in and of itself and nor is exploring the details of the designs and machines created during that time.
Thank you,
Madoc Pope