I must admit I really can't
see what all the hoopla is about the Luftwaffe. After
all, they lost. The Fw 190 is okay, sort of, I guess.
The Bf 109 doesn't do much for me, though I suppose I
will add one or two to the collection eventually, most
likely in Finnish markings. I do however like the weird
and wonderful, experimentals, prototypes and pre-production
aircraft - and the just plain bizarre. The Do 335 certainly
falls into more than one of those categories so I'm more
than happy to invite it in out of the cold, despite its
fascist leanings.
The Dragon kit has a reputation
for being ill-fitting and in truth it does require some
care to build, however with a lot of test fitting and
pre-planning to identify the danger spots it goes together
reasonably well. Most of the fit problems I had were of
my own doing as a result of modifications and extra detailing.
A few after market bits were used and abused, mainly the
Eduard etched set, Falcon canopy and the superb Moskit
exhausts, sadly no longer available. See construction
page for details.
My main references on the
type were the Monogram Aviation Publications book by Richard
Smith, Eddie Creek and Thomas Hitchcock and the Classic
book by Mssrs. Creek and Smith again but with Gerhard
Roletschek standing in for Herr Hitchcock. Clearly these
guys are far more interested in planes with crosses on
than I am so I took their word when it came to painting.
I really don't want to get embroiled in the whole Luftwaffe
paint thing, suffice to say everyone seems to have a different
interpretation of how the colours "should" look.
I used Polly Scale paints for the main camouflage colours
which, I'm told, are RLM 81 Brown-Violet and RLM 82 Bright
Green on top with RLM 76 Light Blue on the bottom. Seemples
you say, and you would be right, except that Polly Scale
has deemed RLM 82 to be Dark Green, RLM 83 Light Green,
RLM 76 to be Light Gray and RLM 78 to be Light Blue. To
further complicate matters, Testors Model Master doesn't
have an RLM 82 in its range but it does have RLM 80 which
is Olivgrun and they say RLM 78 is Hellblau and RLM 76
is Lichtblau. According to Google translate, Hellblau
is German for Light Blue, and Lichtblau is German for...
you guessed it, Light Blue. Confused? Oh good, it's not
just me then. In the end I went with the descriptions
and ignored the RLM references, finishing it in Brown-Violet,
Bright (or Light) Green and Light (or... Light) Blue.
The green I thought ended up a bit too bright,
so I oversprayed this with a couple of thin coats of Gunze
Smoke which toned it down nicely.
I kept weathering to a
minimum since these were pre-production aircraft and didn't
get a lot of flight time, though 103 in particular looked
to be in pretty poor shape by the time it was found by
US troops. A few paint chips around the cockpit and wing
leading edges, some exhaust stains and a bit of mud on
the tires were all I added. I used the new(ish) Humbrol
weathering powders for the mud and their Blue/Grey wash
for the panel lines and I must say I was impressed with
how well they worked. I also used a dash of their Smoke
Grey weathering powder mixed with Gunze Clear Flat for
the exhaust stains and this was very effective.
Decals came from various
sources. The kit decals were thick and very off-white
so they were not used with the exception of a few of the
stencils. Swastikas came from an Xtradecal sheet, upper
wing Balkenkreuze are Aeromaster, lower wings from the
spare decal box and fuselage crosses from Techmod. The
latter are beautifully thin, opaque - and completely resistant
to any decal setting solvent in the known universe. Even
DACOs strong solution wouldn't touch them, and that stuff
could soften concrete if given half a chance. Much slicing
over panel lines and pressing down with dampened cloths
ensued until eventually the durn things looked okay.
The tail numbers had me stumped for a bit. Originally
I was going to do aircraft 107, until I realised, too
late of course, that this aircraft had the d/f loop on
the bottom instead of the top, as did my second choice,
105. This would have meant major surgery to remove the
mount and relocate it. With the model fully painted and
well into the decal stage this was not an option I wanted
to explore any further. I could have, and should have
done 102, but everyone does that one and I wanted something
a bit different. I settled on 103 which had the required
dorsal location of the d/f loop, but there was a problem;
the "3" was a very unique style and nowhere
in my vast collection of decals could I find anything
even remotely resembling it. After much searching through
ye olde decal box I eventually found a partial sheet that
had come from an old Revell issue of the Do 335, which
I'm guessing was the Matchbox kit in a Revell box. Strange
that it should be in my collection because I've never
built that kit, I can only assume it came from some decal
scraps given to me by someone else. On this sheet were
tail markings for 102, 105 and 112, the latter being a
two seater. By cutting off the top of a 2 and combining
it with the bottom of a 5 I managed to produce a fairly
reasonable facsimile of the odd looking number 3. In this
case, 2 + 5 = 3; proof positive that math is definitely
not my strongest subject!
Dragon provides semi-complete
wheel wells out of the box. The side walls are moulded
as part of the lower wing, however they are only half
the depth of the well, leaving large open spaces all around.
I finished these off with sheet plastic cut and shaped
to fit around the openings and closing off the gaps. Similarly,
the nose wheel well has large gaps on the sides because
the seperate well is not deep enough to meet the fuselage
halves. These were closed off with .005" sheet which
was sanded flush with the outer edges of the wheel well
opening.
The landing light cover was a solid block of clear plastic
with two half-depth holes in the back to simulate the
landing lights. This made for an excellent representation
of a solid block of clear plastic with two holes in it,
but not such a good job at representing a clear landing
light cover with two lights behind it. I vacformed the
cover in .010" acetate using the solid lump as a
form, boxed in the opening in the wing and drilled two
shallow holes to take MV Products lenses. Me likey more.
The Eduard etched set provides
instrument panel, sidewalls and consoles, seat belts,
foot rests, rudder pedals and other sundry bits and pieces.
Finished off with Falcon's always excellent vacform canopies
that fit like a, well... a really nicely fitting vacform
canopy. Strange. Canopy framing is mostly painted decal
strips with the edges of the windscreen being masked and
painted. Revi 16B gunsight is from Quickboost.
All control surfaces were
seperated, extensively re-worked (especially the ailerons,
which are about 3 scale inches thick at the trailing edge),
cast in resin and then attached in offset positions. This
will also save me a lot of work if I ever get around to
building the two other Dragon Do 335s (the heavily armed
B-2 and the two seat A-12) I have in the "to do"
pile. You know, that pile that mocks me every time I look
at it because it knows full well I'll never live long
enough to even make a dent in it, unless of course modern
science finds a cure for death, bad eyesight, fumbling
fingers and general mental decrepitude.
I did make one fairly serious
error and, as usual, discovered it far too late to do
anything about it without causing major destruction. Being
rather pre-occupied with finding an aircraft that had
the d/f loop in the right place, I somehow completely
missed the fact that aircraft 103 was not armed! There
should be no channels or bulges for the machine guns on
the upper cowling and no cannon muzzle sticking out of
the spinner. So despite the fact that I don't do "what
if" or Luft '46 subjects, I've ended up with one
anyway. Oh well, I'll try not to lose sleep over it.
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