[Fanart] Battle of Athens - DA SS
This is actually a fanart Secret Santa for someone over on DA. She wanted 'an accurate portrayal of a WWI or WWII battle' so with some thought I went with my favorite little-known battle, the Battle of Athens! I can't post it on DA yet but I'm really proud of it and am just going to hope she doesn't have an account on LJ...
BoA
The Battle of Athens was on April 20th, 1941. Stationed in Athens, Greece, at the time were twelve, that's right TWELVE British RAF pilots, one of which was Roald Dahl, the famous children's author. Germany was currently in the process of invading Greece to help out Italy, who was failing in their own invasion. The RAF was infinitely outnumbered, but the group kept a stiff upper lip and did their best to fend off the much more advanced German Luftwaffe from attacking their ships.
What started as a formation flight above Athens to 'give support to the people' turned into a crazy dogfight when all the pilots were ambushed by twice or even three times as many Luftwaffe. The RAF were eventually driven back and forced to flee to Egypt, but not before putting up quite a fight. Roald Dahl described it in his book 'Going Solo' as absolute madness. He didn't know who was shot or who was shooting or who was shot down, he just flew for his life.
Thus in this picture I drew RAF!England and Luftwaffe!Germany duking it out. The RAF flew Hawker Hurricanes, which I was able to positively confirm from Roal Dahl's book, but I didn't know what specific plane the Luftwaffe might have been flying, so I just drew Messerschmitt Bf 109's. In both planes I exaggerated the size of the cockpits because I wanted England and Germany to be visible, but... You can tell it's them, right? *frets* The Messerschmitt's cockpit also turned out rounder than it was supposed to be... Ah well! I'm still really proud of how this picture turned out.
Background
Ref 1 Ref 2
BoA
The Battle of Athens was on April 20th, 1941. Stationed in Athens, Greece, at the time were twelve, that's right TWELVE British RAF pilots, one of which was Roald Dahl, the famous children's author. Germany was currently in the process of invading Greece to help out Italy, who was failing in their own invasion. The RAF was infinitely outnumbered, but the group kept a stiff upper lip and did their best to fend off the much more advanced German Luftwaffe from attacking their ships.
What started as a formation flight above Athens to 'give support to the people' turned into a crazy dogfight when all the pilots were ambushed by twice or even three times as many Luftwaffe. The RAF were eventually driven back and forced to flee to Egypt, but not before putting up quite a fight. Roald Dahl described it in his book 'Going Solo' as absolute madness. He didn't know who was shot or who was shooting or who was shot down, he just flew for his life.
Thus in this picture I drew RAF!England and Luftwaffe!Germany duking it out. The RAF flew Hawker Hurricanes, which I was able to positively confirm from Roal Dahl's book, but I didn't know what specific plane the Luftwaffe might have been flying, so I just drew Messerschmitt Bf 109's. In both planes I exaggerated the size of the cockpits because I wanted England and Germany to be visible, but... You can tell it's them, right? *frets* The Messerschmitt's cockpit also turned out rounder than it was supposed to be... Ah well! I'm still really proud of how this picture turned out.
Background
Ref 1 Ref 2
