EAW Polikarpov I-15 

This I-15 was from the 1st Escuadrilla, of the Spanish Republican Air Force - Fuerza Aereas Republicanas (FARE) - flown by Vicente Castillo based at Monjos in December 1938. This was one of the Spanish license built I-15'. Soviet manufactured I-15's carried codes of CC while Spanish built aircraft were coded CA.

The I-15 began production in the Soviet Union in 1934 using mainly directly imported American powerplant equipment, the Wright SGR-1820 Cyclone engine and other items such as the Hamilton Standard V22 propeller and Stromberg carburetor. This equipment was later copied and put into licensed production in the Soviet Union. The engine became the M-25 in Soviet lexicon.

The I-15 had a top speed of 228 miles per hour (367km/h) and had a service ceiling of 32,000 feet. It carried 4 .303 machine guns in the nose - 2 over the engine and 1 on each side of it. Some 675 I-15 fighters were produced before production ceased in 1937. Of these, 186 were sent to Spain to fight for the Spanish Republican government.

The first I-15s arrived in Spain in October 1936 along with an eventual 141 Soviet pilots and some 2000 ground personnel. Stalin was not just lending a hand to help another communist government. He charged the Spanish government $35,000 US dollars per plane, which had to be paid in gold.

The Republicans also bought a license to produce the Chato in Spain and between August 1937 and the end of the war a total of 237 "Chatos" were built in Spain.

The Republicans dubbed the plane the "Chato" - meaning snubbed nose. The Nationalists did not believe it was a Soviet design. They thought it had to be an American plane, or a copy of one. So they called it a "Curtiss".

Both Soviet and Spanish pilots flew the Chato in combat. But so did a lot of international volunteer pilots. There were Frenchmen Jean Dary (5 kills), Abel Guides (10 kills) KIA 1937, ? Rayneau (5 kills), and William Labussier (5 kills), Austrian Thomas Dobiash, Germans (yes!) Hermann Feld KIA May 1937, Walter Katz KIA 1938, Belgian Andre Autrique (1 Me109), Bulgarian Sachar Sachayinov Goronov (22? anecdotal), Yugoslavians Bozhko Petrovich (7 kills) KIA 1937 and Dobre Petrovic, Britons Charles Brunswick and Paul Williams and a number of Americans - who were actually quite successful fighter pilots:

 - Frank Tinker scored 8 kills (3 He51, 3 Cr32 and 2 Me109s) Tinker also flew the Mosca in combat, with his last 5 victories in that aircraft.
 - Harold (Whitey) Dahl scored 5 kills (2 He51, 1 Cr32 2?) before being shot down and captured.
 - Albert Baumler scored 5 kills (3 He51 and 2 Cr32) and Later in WWII flew with the USAAF 23rd FG raising his score to 13 total.
 - James Peck scored 5 kills (2 He 51 and 3 Cr32)
 - Orrin Bell scored 7 kills (all He 51)
 - Ben Leider scored 2 kills (He 51) KIA over Jarama 1937
 - James Allison scored 1 kill (He51)
 - Stephan Daduk scored 1 kill (He111)
 - Charles Koch scored 2 kills (?)

Top Spanish Republican I-15 Aces
Andreas Garcia de la Calle - 11
Manuel Aguirre Lopez - 11 to 17
Miguel Zambudio Martinez - 10
Manuel Zarauza Claver - 10
Juan Comas Borras - 10
Jose Bravo Fernadez - 10
Emillio Ramirez Bravo - 10

Top Russian I-15 Aces
Anatol Serov -  16
Pavel Rychagov - 15
Y. Eremenko - 14
S. P. Denisov - 13
Turshanski - 6

The I-15 also fought in the Kalkhan Gol/Mongolian war between the Japanese and the Soviet Union. Little is known of that history.

When Germany invaded Russia in 1941, a number of I-15s remained in service. They were employed mostly in night harassment missions.

I created this model specifically for the Spanish Civil War campaign being developed. Without the Polikarpov I-15, SCW just could not be complete.

I have no doubt I have spent more time on this model than any other I have done except for the Lancaster. Moggy was most helpful in finding better rendering locations to place the wing stick on hardpoints. Even so, I have approximately 300 hours in this plane and it still has rendering issues that I can't find a fix for, especially around the gull wings sections. I believe they cannot be solved without a completely new bsp tree calculation. I hope the results are acceptable to the community until Alessandro Borges finally finishes his new Studio/bsp calculator tool, because, Folks this is the absolute best I can do with it.

The rendering fixes applied to this plane, most specifically the multiple element mappings, have completely overwhelmed the current Studio tool, and it can no longer open this aircraft's fuselage file. The last 40% of the development was done with a text editor.

SteveT and Karel have also experienced the same dilemmas and the failure of the current Studio tool to be able to handle the rendering fixes we have to use without a bsp calculator tool. So sorry to say, biplanes are at the extreme limit of what we can accomplish in EAW and each one is a hard won achievement. Worse, because they (I-15, He51, Cr32, etc.) can't be opened with Studio, further developments of new biplanes can't readily use them as a basis to work from.

Having said all of that (I am frustrated, after all) this is not a bad model and I think you will have a lot of fun flying it. It's just not perfect, and I wanted it to be perfect.

SteveT has made a completely new cockpit for it, and what a beauty it is, too. Steve also contributed the long distance model.

I created a new medium distance model and shadow for the plane, the skin etc. 

What's so great about the distance models? They have two wings of course! ;>)

Fly it in the SCW campaign, or in Charles Gunst's ECAPanel in the Spitfire 14 slot. I hope you like it.

Cheers,

Captain Kurt
Sept. 2002


