MeneMene

Some progress: Re-attached the severed nose piece from way back in step one Finished and installed the bombsight. Last peek at the cockpit before closing it up Some internal detailing for the gondola Brassin machine-guns, the kit barrels were a bit thick All closed up DF antenna Some nasty seam and scribing repair needed to be done after primer revealed some flaws. I also managed to snap one of the MG barrels; it is safe and sound and will be re-attached at the end of the build

Thanks, I will go with a particularly green hue of RLM02.

Next major steps was cutting up the kit engine parts and replacing them with the Vector resin. Cutting up the kit parts. The kit comes with a seperate sprue with the older A-5 nacelles without the radiator(?) on the bottom. I used these because they were easier to cut straight without the underside bulge. Kit rear nacelles and gear bays attached to the wing, and then mated with the resin baseplate for the nacelles: Full nacelles installed Head-on view showing the improved hollow intake ducts: Does anyone know how I should paint the wells that the radiator/cowl flaps fit over? RLM 2? I haven't decided if I'm going to pose mine open or not, but jut for planning it would be nice to know what color to use for these wells and the inside of the flaps.

I test fitted the canopy, and I'm concerned that the rear/engineer's seat is still a bit too high, I don't know if there is enough clearance between the top of the seat and the canopy blister above. I might have to cut off the head-rest and shorten the legs and re-attach. Also, I need to add a reflector sight in front of the pilot. Most of the Finnish Ju-88's had a fixed cannon for strafing, and as far as I can tell most had the Stuvi dive-bomb sight as well. I don't have another kit I can steal a sight from; my options seem to be making my own rough approximation out of plastic card and acetate film, or getting an aftermarket Revi sight and posing it as a Stuvi. Any suggestions?

For my first WIP here, I'm doing the ICM Ju-88A-4 with a lot of aftermarket corrections. I will be doing a Finnish aircraft, JK-252. This was the only aircraft I could find clear evidence of without the forward-firing MGFF cannon in the gondola (which the kit lacks). Other Finnish-specific alterations will be the removal of the forward machine-gun and the dive brakes. First up is the surgery for the AIMS cockpit correction. After some pilot holes and work with the razor saw, I had the front portion of the underside fuselage off relatively cleanly. Test fit seems OK I also cut off the front of the removed section for re-use To compensate for the raised cockpit floor, it is necessary to shorten the seat supports Here is the initial layout planning. The AIMS correction fits well into the nose of the aircraft, but it would have been nice if the kit came with a bit more guidance on how the other components were supposed to fit inside the cockpit. There's not quite enough room in front of the seat for the control column, and the rudder pedal placement is very vague as well. On the underside, I used CA glue + talc to fill the seam between the palstic and resin sections, as well as some unnecessary panel lines, and sanded it smooth More layout planning, along with some Eduard photoetch Here is where we stand after adding the Eduard pre-painted interior photoetch, and installing most of the cockpit components. A few of the control levers flew off the tweezers into the great void of despair, but I got most of them on. The fuselage of my kit was warped, and formed a peak at the seam rather than a flat join; clamping was necessary to get the fuselage in the right profile. I also made a spacer out of some plastic rod to help the fuselage more accurately join with the bottom wing part that the cockpit is attached to. Wings attached. There are some medium gaps and clean-up to take care of, but nothing impossible.

Thank you! For the last unknown in the build, should I include the dive brakes or not if I'm aiming to make mine in the fall of 1943? Wikipedia says the Finns removed them in the summer of 1943, although I haven't been able to confirm. The black and white photographs of 252 from late 1944 definitely have the dive brakes removed.

I agree, I think the black and white pictures are from after the armistice. However, these pictures, if we assume they're from Sep 1944 or later, have the cannon. It's a bit blurry, but you can definitely see it in the black and white picture off the left wing. The colorized pictures above it, which I think are the same aircraft, I think are earlier. The paint is much fresher, the tail numbers crisp, yellow band is there, etc. But there is no cannon. Is it known for certain that every single Finnish Ju-88 was delivered with the cannon mounted? The timing of these color and b/w pictures would suggest that at some point, for whatever reason, JK-252 had its cannon removed, and then later had it put back on. I don't know how the cannon was removed or what went in it's place when it was taken out, but in those colorized pictures there's no trace of the cannon, not even a hole or covering plate. Or maybe JK-252 was delivered without the cannon, and then after a bit had one attached. Thanks for the images of the mounting system, I will definitely save them. Based on those pictures I think I'm going to leave the cannon off like the colorized images, but I'm still puzzled as to why the cannon would be removed without a trace and then put back on later.

Thanks- do you have any information on what conditions the gun would be removed like in the pictures I've linked above?

I have some separate photoetch sights, and I can probably sculpt the sleeve out of Milliput or something similar. If that fails, we can conclude that it would be more realistic to leave the gun off and plate over the opening, as opposed to putting the gun in (which I can't find a single picture of?)

And here are some different pictures of JK-252, which apparently are from 1944. If my identification of the two color images is correct (which I think it is, with some incorrect colorization), this looks to be much later, the paint markings are worn and faded (the 2 on the tail is almost invisible and the yellow fuselage band looks to have been overpainted), and it now carries the ventral cannon where earlier it clearly did not. So my current conclusion is that it would be accurate to model JK-252 without the ventral cannon in the relatively clean and earlier paintwork, and that at some later point it had the cannon added. I'm certainly not an expert so if anyone has information to the contrary please let me know. Finally, in the first colorized image from the front, is there an MG 81 in the front windscreen or is that something else sticking out? I know that the Finnish examples usually had these removed, but there is definitely something there and it doesn't quite look like an MG barrel. Thanks in advance

I've now found another example of the aircraft without the cannon. It's hard to tell, but I'm fairly sure this is JK-252. You can see the last digit of the serial is a 2 in the image from the front, and the middle digit is probably a 5 (the top is flat) in the image from behind. The colors of the spinners and tail number don't match the -252 I have on the decal sheet, but these images look colorized and so maybe they were filled in wrong. I have no idea of the time period of the images though.

Thank you very much, I'm looking for any help I can get. Just to be clear, the aircraft I have decals for are JK-252, JK-256, JK-260 and JK-268. I linked pictures of -267 because that's the only images I can find of the same aircraft with and without the cannon. I'd love to be able to make one of those first four without the cannon, just not sure about the accuracy.

Also, maybe that second picture of JK-267 I linked has been mis-labelled, and is actually from post-war use as a trainer? That would explain the operating at a real airport and the removal of the ventral cannon. Edit: Actually never mind, it still has the Swastika markings, so it's still during the continuation war

That's the strange thing. The caption of the first picture I linked of JK-267 says it's from May 1943, a month after delivery, and it has the cannon. The second picture, in the snow and without the cannon, is dated as April 1944, a year later, so it was removed in the time period? Meanwhile I'm having trouble finding pictures of the other aircraft without the cannon.

I'm working on the 1/48 ICM Ju-88A-4, and want to do a Finnish example. I have a Techmod decal sheet for aircraft JK-252, JK-256, JK-260 and JK-268. All of these aircraft in the decal diagrams have a MGFF mounted in the ventral gondola, and this is corroborated by pictures I have been able to find of each, such as here: This is a big problem for me, as the kit does not provide this weapon. I have also found one pictures of one aircraft, JK-267, both with and without the fixed MG FF. The paint scheme is different, but I'm pretty sure it's the same aircraft as this website only lists one JK-267. Does anyone have any more info? I would absolutely love it if someone told me it was possible to build one of the above aircraft without the cannon. Was the cannon easily removable? Why do we have a picture of JK-267 with and without it? If I... sigh... need to add one, what would be the best way? I see eduard makes a resin MG FF, same with some other manufacturers, but I'd have to scratchbuild the mount.

Great work! Can you talk me through what pylon parts you used? I'm making the Su-17 kit and am having some trouble- I got the fuselage and inner wing pylons correct to carry a total of four bombs, and then found those empty missile pylons for the middle wing stations somewhere in one of the missile sprues, same as you did. Now, however, I have nothing left to use for the drop tanks on the outer stations, which looks to have the same attachment method as the bombs.

Thanks

Sorry for the thread necromancy, but did you get an answer to this? Here is a picture of the exact aircraft, but I can't quite see what's behind the pilot's seat. If I had to guess right now it looks like there's something curved behind the seat, which would suggest that Eduard is right and I should omit the armor pressure bulkhead. Any thoughts? Also, any suggestions as to what color to make the drop tank, based on this image? It looks darker than the rest of the aircraft. RLM 65? Bare metal?

Many thanks for the sources and information, especially for this drawing. Here is where my build is at so far, test-fitted into the fuselage side. The drawing is hard to see exactly; am I interpreting it and what you wrote correctly if I put the PPI facing straight up, attached to the tubing framework to the right of the observers seat? In the space below the black box with the white switches/wiring?

I'm working on the Tamiya Swordfish II, and have most of the cockpit complete. However, the aircraft I'm modelling has the ASV Mk. II radar antennas, but the kit doesn't come with any consoles or equipment in the cockpit for it? Does anyone have/know of any images of the radar display/controls in the cockpit? I have one source that says it was placed in the area under the pilot's seat, for use by the middle-seat crewman, but I can't find any pictures to scratchbuild something. Thanks

Ok, thanks for all your help. Seems there are some inaccuracies in Tamiya's representation. I'll probably do an aircraft with HMS Tracker in 1943, HS158 with 816 squadron, anti-submarine duty. A final question for you very helpful people, this aircraft has a set of four tubes in a line, emerging diagonally from the belly of the rear fuselage. Any ideas as to what they are?

Thanks, very informative. Do you have any other information about HS164 as 2F then? Did it only join the squadron after Ironclad while the squadron was based in South Africa?

A red 2F behind the roundels, HS 164 as the tail code. I'm just going by the Tamiya instructions, so I don't have a source about how accurate those are. Also, regardless of the weapon load, I'm guessing I should leave the rocket rails off?

Perfect, thank you so much. That leaves only the exhaust question unanswered. Almost all of the pictures I've been able to find of this time period have the normal short exhausts, not the porcupine stacks, which are the only ones specified by the Tamiya kit.

So are the Tamiya instructions incorrect in portraying a No.810 sqdn Swordfish Mk. II in the Indian Ocean with Illustrious in May 1942? Wikipedia says that production of the Sworfdish III began in 1943, and that the differences included radar, metal wing undersurfaces to allow for rockets, and possibly a more powerful engine. So would all the Swordfish aircraft in the 1942 Madagascar campaigns have been Swordfish I, and Tamiya is incorrect? Does this mean that essentially all Swordfish II and beyond aircraft were essentially just escort carrier or Coastal Command based, and wouldn't have carried torpedoes often if at all? Yes, sorry, you'll have to forgive my Americanisms. Perfect, thanks I'll try that