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Focke Wulf Fw201 - or first foray into the dark side


depressed lemur

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Hi guys, I have never tried what if before, mainly because I was worried about ruining a model. However, having purchased a J7W1 Shinden, I thought that as it only ever flew a couple of times, and schemes are limited to say the least, I would have a go.  I understand that the normal starting point is to make a back story, so, with apologies to any colonial members I knocked up the following. Feel free to criticise my attempt at rewriting history.

 

Following the attack on Pearl harbour in December 1941, the previously neutral Americans were drawn in to WWII thirsting for revenge. This single event effectively made the Second World War truly global.  The Japanese military then began a series of strikes and invasions across the Pacific, quickly taking Singapore, Guam, Borneo, and on into the Philippines.   By the end of 1941 the Japanese had taken Hong Kong, and Manila.  1942 began much the same way, with Japanese forces seemingly invincible as they expanded their grasp over the pacific rim islands.  A joining of forces with the Germans and Italians strengthened their cause.  


In response, the American forces started to grow in strength, and pledged to stop this expansion.  Acceptance that the Pearl Harbour restricted immediate actions, the Americans relied heavily on their carriers, and set about finding the Japanese carriers in order to wrest control from the Japanese.  In order to boost morale, and to demonstrate to Japan that America was not impotent, a raid on Japan was planned.  The “Doolittle” surprise raid on the 18th April achieved this objective with much praise and rejoicing in the US.  The Japanese responded by accelerating planned point defence fighters.  


May 7th saw a pivotal battle in the Pacific Theatre with the start of the Battle of the Coral Sea.  This was the first naval engagement conducted purely by airpower from carriers.  As the Japanese moved their naval forces in preparation of the invasion of Port Moresby, the intercepted communications allowed the US forces to react by sending Yorktown, Enterprise, Hornet and Lexington into the area with the intention of sinking the Japanese fleet carriers.  Japanese scout submarines in the area were tasked with supporting and protecting the Japanese carriers Zuikaku  and Shōkaku and the  light carrier Shōhō.  Both forces sent out scout forces to locate and identify the enemy forces.  Mid morning of the 7th saw Yorktown aircraft identify Shōhō and her destroyer escort.  Despite almost suicidal attacks, the SBD’s were unable to broach the shield, losing one third of the force for one destroyer sunk and one damaged. Shōhō sailed on unharmed. In response, the Japanese fleet armed for immediate launch of strike aircraft.  Half an hour after the attack, the submarine I-21 spotted the returning Americans and relayed their position and direction to the main fleet.  Angered by the American assault, Shigeyoshi Inoue demanded immediate response.  The Imperial Japanese Navy prepared to launch its own strike, and started with scout aircraft.  Following the lead from I-21, the search concentrated on the northern approaches whilst the strike force assembled.  A stroke of luck occurred when the Kawashina floatplane from the Furutaka spotted the American fleet and radioed their position.  The American fleet, recovering their strike planes were caught in the open.  Twenty minutes later the Japanese Val and Kate strike force began their assault.  With limited defense, there was little the Americans could do, and in short order Yorktown and Lexington suffered catastrophic damage.  Hornet managed to avoid the torpedoes aimed at her, but suffered from the Val dive bombers.  Twenty minutes after the attack was instigated, the Japanese aircraft withdrew.  In their wake, Yorktown had been sunk, Lexington was irreparably damaged, and Hornet had received sufficient damage to need to withdraw from the area.  Enterprise left the battlle area and steamed towards the mainland, eventually arriving at Alemeda base near Los Angeles. Two weeks later, Hornet limped into the dry dock area fro repair.  This setback had a profound impact on the American war machine.  Suddenly vulnerable, Germany first seemed nothing but words in the wind.  A lip service was paid to the British in the supply of fighters and AFVs, but the bombers were being held back to the west coast in case the Japanese invaded.  Urgency was given to any project which could bring the striking force to the Japanese mainland, and eyes were drawn to the new B29 from Boeing.  One year earlier than planned, the B29 took to the air, albeit in a less developed form.  Despite warnings from Boeing and the war ministry, the new B29 was ushered into service despite known shortcomings.  The first raid took place against Tokyo on September 15th 1942.  Extensive damage was caused by this raid, prompting the Japanese to bring into service the J7W1 Shin Den.  Very quickly, this new design started making its effect felt amongst the bomber streams.  The heavy firepower, incredible agility and speed made it an unwelcome introduction to the US airmen tasked with the destruction of the Japanese war machine.  Within weeks, the Shin Den had gained superiority over the home islands.

 

 

Meanwhile, in Germany, the RLM were struggling to stem the British night intruders.  The Lancaster and Halifax bombers were adequately being fought by the BF110 and JU88 night fighters, but the Mosquito menace was becoming uncontrollable.  In desperation, the RLM looked for inspiration from their new allies in the east.  As a result, twelve Shin Den airframes were dispatched to Germany and equipped with the defense forces to the west of Dortmund.  Their task? Find and destroy the Mosquito intruders.

 

Not the best introduction, but I have decided to join the dark side and dip my toe into the murky waters that seems to be known as WHIF.  For your delight (or other wise) I will be attempting to build the SWS 1:48th Shin Den as a Luftwaffe “Defense of the Reich” machine.  All marking will of course be fictitious, so ya boo sucks to you to all the Luftwaffe experts out there.

Enjoy.

 

Starting point is the box shot

 

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Most of my work is glacial, but I shall try to progress this.

Edited by depressed lemur
Title update
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Thanks for the encouragement guys, I managed to stick something together already:penguin:. So this WIP lark might give me the push I need.

 

So, page 1 of the ZM instructions start with the engine. The omens are good as all the engine parts are on one sprue, so, no need to open every bag at the off. Detail is very good, and the parts almost fall together, so I am feeling quite hopeful for this.  This is the end result of a couple of hours work, including painting.  So far, paints have been Vallejo air which give good coverage and are a nice representation of the metallic effect. A quick black wash to bring out the detail and here is where I am at.

 

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I noticed in the photos that some paint was missing, so that kept me entertained for a further few minutes.  In case you were wondering why I called this an FW201 this is because this looks like a 190's engine copy to me. Ergo, they would a be better placed to work on it.

 

Anyway, next up is the cockpit and internals and once again, all the bits needed are on the next sprue, so let's see what happens next.

More soon.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The glacier (like the turtle), moves.

 

I have finally managed to make a start, and must say, on the whole, that I am very happy with the way that Zoukei Mura have packaged and designed this kit. So far, each basic section is held in a single sprue, so there is no need to open each bag as soon as you open the box. On the down side, the plastic feels slightly odd, and doesn't seem to want to react to liquid poly, so I have resorted to the Humbrol in the applicator bottle which seems fine.

 

After beating the engine into a fair resemblance I moved attention to the cockpit. After undercoating, I decided that the Luftwaffe would not want the cockpit to be in the same colours as the IJA, and as I had a premix of RLM2 I chose this as the base colour.  Most of the sprue gates seem to be on the the glue faces which means that painting on the sprue is a practicality. Unfortunately, this means my painting skills :tmi:. After a few hours stabbing a paintbrush at plastic under a magnifying glass, I ended up with this.

 

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Emboldened by my apparent ability to acting do something, I thought I would go as far as to cutting off the sprue and wave the glue needle at them.

 

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Must un-lemur like :D

 

And looking into the box I found another big bit I could cut out and stick on

 

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Unfortunately, there are no straps in the kit, so I need to get SWIMBO to drink a bottle of wine so I can Nick the foil. The question is, where can I attach them? I have ruled out the roll cage, and suspect the seat is not good eitherr. Any suggestions?

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  • 2 months later...

Well, thanks to work, I have been spending a lot of time up and down the country, with occasional breaks for modelling, and even less for updating.  As I am back for a few days i thought I would show what I have managed to do to this project.

 

Thanks to Pete I decided to have a go at stretching some sprue to make n anchor point for some seat belts. This new fangled idea took quite a few goes as every time I managed to achieve something fine enough to act as aerials etc, while I was trying to get the same thickness as the framework. I have so much fine sprue I could probably rig a whole squadron of WW1 aircraft.  Anyway, before the candle finally died I managed to hit the right thickness.

 

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As you can see, I have added some straps to this. SWIMBO took one for the team to help out and bravely opened up a bottle of bubbly :elephant:.  What can I say? My wife supports my modelling :clap:.

 

Having achieved this, attention next concerns the nose section. Once again they sprue layout means that you only open one poly bag.  Part of me thought that I should try to put some mg151s into the nose, but having seen the supplied weaponry I decided to use them. My rationale being that German engineers would see the advantage of the longer barrels and adapt the breeches to allow suitable ammunition.  One again Zoukei Mura have engineered this brilliantly, and it almost falls together.

 

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 Immediately under the nose is the wheel bay and this is made up of a few parts which make up a very convincing bay, including up locks.

 

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The next stage is to add the engine, which snicks into place on the mounting frame with minimum fuss, and lines up perfectly.

 

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The bluing on the exhaust looks much subtler in real life than in these pics.

All this work results in binning an empty sprue. Have I mentioned that I am impressed with the design of this kit?  Next comes the skin.  This means opening three bags :surprised:at the same time so you can spray the interior.

 

For the first time shake and bake takes a back seat. The skin is very (and I mean very) finely moulded, with about as close as you can get to scale thickness. Working from the back forward, this took three or four days to ensure correct fit. However, once in place, everything fits perfectly.

 

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So, this is where I am now. Next up, wings.

 

Thanks for looking

Edited by depressed lemur
Found how to add pics following Photobucket disaster.
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A little bit more slow progress has been made over the weekend.  As I expected, attaching the wing skins was a slow process in order to maintain contact with the wing spars and mating surfaces.  the best approach seemed to be glue a small section to a spar point and leave to set.  this was slow, methodical but worked well.  it seems quite odd as a method of attaching wings and fuselage panels, compared to the usual full piece with cut outs for detail.  There is some fine opportunity for someone to do a cutaway type approach, but not for me.  I will, however, try to leave of a couple of panels to show off the interior detail.  Last night, as I finally got the wings to set I broke out the airbrush to start painting (otherwise it would probably just sit there for weeks.  As this is a whiff, I decided that it would probably be used to intercept dusk or night intruders, so I am adapting a couple of night schemes I have seen to see how it goes.  On the plus side, I can't get the scheme wrong, now, can I??

 

This is how she is looking at the moment.

 

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I have a slight problem, in that my compressor has developed a habit of stalling at inappropriate moments.  This has resulted in a bit of a patchy finish, but I am going to take advantage of it as it gives a kind of weathered appearance.  The down side is, I may have to re-think my idea of a mirror wave style finish..

 

Thanks for looking.

 

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During the last couple of days I have had a minor upset with Mr Shinden in that I couldn't get the engine back plate to fit to the lower fairing.  To make sure the glue set, I used a clamp to hold things in place.  After about 10 minutes there was an almighty bang, with the clamp flying past my ear and disappearing into the depths of the room.  Turns out I was trying to fix the wrong bits together (must learn to read instructions better) and the stresses were too much.  End result was ripping the engine from its mounting, from the supercharger and knocking off the prop shaft.  On the plus side, all the bits stayed fairly local so I was able to rebuild, but it did demonstrate how difficult things are if you can't follow the correct sequence.

 

Moving swiftly on (well, swiftly for me) time has come to stick a bit of paint on the top half.  As I am still having compressor issues I ditched the idea of a mirror wave style finish, and have gone for a two tone grey over light grey.  I think that it looks like a plausible night / dusk fighter finish and (to me at least) is starting to look ok. 

 

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I also thought I would have a go at a spiral on the spinner with a bit of masking.  Looks ok.

 

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More to follow.

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This little project is moving ever nearer completion.  having got the main scheme on, I turned my thoughts to markings. a quick trawl through my spares box found a couple of swastikas for the tail, and a fuselage cross , but nothing for the wings.  As this is my first attempt at straying away from what the kit maker intended, and having tried stretching sprue, I thought I would go for another first.  this.

 

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At least it could give that painted on look.

 

And this is what it looked like

 

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and a full shot.

 

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This is still a long way from completion, so last night I started closing up some of the panels.  This is a long process, and again the engineering helps.  Eventually things start falling in place, so if you are making one of these kits, don't panic about seemingly loose fitting items.  It all seemed to come good in the end.

 

This is where I am up to at the minute.

 

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With one side showing the internals off a bit.

 

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Next up, wheels, flaps, propeller and lights.

 

Hopefully finishing up tonight.

 

Thanks for looking.

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Well, last night was a revelation!   I found that I am capable of actually finishing a model :yahoo: and the world does not actually come to an end :thumbsup:.I

 

I would like to say that this build was an absolute joy all the way through and it inspires me to try another ZM kit.

 

Without further delay, here is where i ended up.

 

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The encouragement I have gained from the many views has inspired me to carry on to the end.

 

Thank you to all who watched and didn't laugh.

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  • 3 weeks later...

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