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Finnish Ju 188 "The Cow"


vppelt68

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One build on its way after my BoB Bf 109 will be finished. V-P

EDIT 240915: I´ll describe in this opening post what I´m about to start building this weekend as the BoB Messerschmitt is finished. I´ll update the build as usual below in new posts.

BACKGROUND:

In late 1943 the loss rate of Bristol Blenheims and Dornier Do 17:s used in high altitude photo reconnaissance exceeded level of tolerance. Finnish Air Force submitted European aeronautic defence and space contractors, those that were available in those political circumstances, a tender for a fast recon plane in rapid delivery. The German Junkers Gmbh offered an off-the-shelf Junkers Ju 188 F taken from their air force, The Luftwaffe production order. The Junkers and The Luftwaffe had got into a nasty fight as The Luftwaffe had become suspicious that The Junkers had falsified their emission reports. The Junkers had claimed that "if The Luftwaffe won´t buy our planes, someone else will". Large scale export contracts to The Soviet Union had already been signed, despite The Luftwaffe opposition as they protested the export of weapons to a totalitarian country that was in war, and to make things worse, in war with Germany! Luckily they had found Swedish arms dealers to act as front men to make the deal internationally acceptable. The Luftwaffe had then put their order on hold, and the already finished planes were waiting for their instrumentation to be transformed to cyrillic alphabets before delivery to East. To this point the lucky Finns became with their tender and within weeks of acceptance the first plane was delivered to Finland. By that time winter had come and the first thing to do was to paint the Junkers in Finnish warpaint. That consisted of light blue undersides with black and green topsides. For the wintertime camouflage the green was replaced with white. Planes also had the eastern front yellow recognition band around fuselage and wingtip undersides.

BACK TO REAL LIFE, eh, back to modelling miniature warplanes, that is...

When I was a real kid I was very tempted by the Matchbox Junkers Ju 188 boxart. It had the sense of speed and showed the elegant purposefulness of the plane. I will build the kit out of the box, legs up as it would be in flight. Sadly I don´t have the original Matchbox stand left so will use an old Frog one. My kit may also lack its crew but in that case I have an almost-dumped-to-the-bin Airfix Ju 88 that can spare its tiny figures. As the plane was purchased for high speed and altitude overland, it won´t need external bomb racks or fuel tanks. Thanks to Matchbox oversimplifying things I shall do my first experiments with Microscale Klear, if I try to open the ventral gunners windows that are solid plastic in the kit. Likewise the camera openings too.

I haven´t taken pics of the kit yet but here´s a copy of InSCALE 72 decal sheet instructions that shows what kind of Finnish warpaint I shall apply to Ju 188 (JK:s 268 and 260). The greens will be white for winter camouflage. I thought I´d alter the plane code to JJ-something as there has never been such code in use here, though it might have retained the JK-code too.

Regards, V-P

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Edited by vppelt68
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Well I have a few options, the F-16 just seems a bit dull (and I want to do my 4 kits is real schemes), how about a pair of Hawks in commemorative schemes and/or an YYA-era Sukhoi Su-9 in DN- blue air superiority scheme?

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Mmm.... Interesting ideas!

I have been also tossing with DX-project alternatives although my favorite is the Mirage 2000-5. A MIG-23 was a real alterative for MIG-21BIS if I recall correct from Laukkanen test flight book. ;)

A projected DB-605-engined Mosquito would also be nice. Maybe when I'm pensioned!

Cheers,

AaCee

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  • 2 weeks later...

The Soviet Union sent Finland a diplomatic note on October 30, 1961, referring to the threat of war and West German militarization and proposing that Finland and the Soviet Union begin consultations on securing the defence of both countries, as provided for in the FCMA treaty of 1948. The note followed close on the heels of the Berlin Crisis. The note precipitated a crisis in Finland: activating the military provisions of the treaty would have frustrated Finland's post-war policy of neutrality in international affairs and greatly damaged Finland's relations with the West at a time when one of the crucial goals of Finnish foreign policy was to reinforce the credibility of Finland's neutrality in the eyes of Western powers which were skeptical of the country's ability to resist Soviet influence. At the time the note was sent, president Urho Kekkonen was on a successful visit to the United States. The proposed consultations threatened the achievements of the previous decade, during which Finland had attained UN membership and the Soviets had vacated the Porkkala military base near Helsinki, leased to them in 1944 for fifty years. At worst, the note was seen as the possible first step towards establishing a Soviet military presence in Finland, and even further, the de facto end of Finnish independence.

President Kekkonen handled the matter by arranging a personal meeting with Nikita Khrushchev in Novosibirsk. As a result of the meeting, the Soviet Union agreed to "postpone" the consultations indefinitely, charging the Finns with monitoring the security situation in Northern Europe. The Finnish interpretation of the agreement was that the Soviets thereby left the matter of initiating military consultations to Finnish discretion, and the crisis was defused (Wikipedia, fact).

What the Soviets were worried about was the apparent inability of Finland to deny its airspace from someone with fast bombers swinging a left hook to reach bomb the Leningrad. The problem was solved by acquiring a batch of state of the art supersonic interceptors (my text, fact).

But, instead of the brand new MiG-21 F-13:s with K-13 IR AAM:s the Soviets decided to export the Sukhoi Su-9B with K-5 beam-riding AAM:s to Finland (fiction). They were technically inferior (fact). They make a decent whif build (fact). Especially in the very avantgarde Finnish Air Force air superiority lo-visibility paint scheme (fiction). But first I´ll finish the BoB Messerschmitt (fact or fiction?).

I´ll try to build an 1:72 UNDA kit #003 Sukhoi Su-9B with scrap decals and fantasy paint scheme, otherwise OOB and her legs up. Regards, V-P

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One hour into building this and I'm quite ready to dump the bugger, for good. I'm perfectly happy to admit this kit is not for me. I'm a shake the box- kit guy and this is not such a kit. So let's look for a plan C... Sorry guys. I'll build something, I promise . V-P

Edited by vppelt68
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But, instead of the brand new MiG-21 F-13:s with K-13 IR AAM:s the Soviets decided to export the Sukhoi Su-9B with K-5 beam-riding AAM:s to Finland (fiction). They were technically inferior (fact). They make a decent whif build (fact).

Very nice story, V-P!

To those of interested modify this sentence to fact replace Su-.9B with AAMs with "Soviet offered MiG-19s without a word about AAMs. This did not attract the top brass of the Finnish AF and they started to evaluate Mirage IIIC and SAAB 35 Draken instead. After that Soviets decided to sell MiG-21F-13s with K-13 missiles with very attractive prise and payment methods."

Sorry to steal your threath...

Prosit!

AaCee

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Skåål, a few hours back I was quite willing to donate the thread to anyone. Now I'm back with a Matchbox kit that has two props and should look just great with Finnish stickers. A whif that should look like an almost-been. Regards, V-P

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...

And we´re airborne, legs up! Here´s what I´ve got, an almost complete Matchbox Ju 188 kit with some parts picked from an Airfix Ju 88 kit plus Airfix and InScale decals. I don´t even need all of these parts!

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Everybody´s heard about the notorious Matchbox trenches. This kit has them only in the wings and marking the bomb and the dinghy bays in the fuselage. Speaking of the glazing of ventral gondola and canopy front... let´s not do that :-(

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But two hours later, she looks like this. Main components attached, major seams filled with putty and excess putty removed. So far no sandpaper or other abrasives have been harmed in construction!

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I applied my favourite Vallejo putty in the gaps, let them dry for a few minutes and removed excess with a cotton ear stick (whaddaya call them in English?) dipped in water. Can´t be any easier than that!

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Yes, the opening for the stand is there already :-). It should be as the landing gear bays are closed. Next, I need to clean some panel lines and sand the fuselage seams. The jury is still out for should I try to open the windows or not? I´ve never done that nor used Microscale Klear before. Well there´s the first time for everything but I´m not sure if it´s this time! Regards, V-P

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I would have done the gondola glazing before the fuselage halves were joined.

Its not too hard to do yet. It looks like the windows might be too big to glaze with Krystal Clear though.

I would drill & file out the openings and glue in a piece of clear plastic, from an old cd case, then sand that to shape ie the curve of the gondola.

Another way is to make a female mould of the gondola and use that to make a male mould, over which you can crash/push mould thin clear plastic for a gondola shape, and cut the window areas out of that for use on the kit.

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Thanks BK. I was worried about the strength of the fuselage halves and thus decided to make those holes later. Maybe silly me but life's an adventure . V-P

EDIT next morning: Some cleaning up yet to do but they´re now cut open. #% that plastic was thick!!! I´ll stick to my opinion about this being better done when the fuselage was already stuck together. Maybe I should have done this before the wings were attached but that´s another story. I´ll also post a pic of the Matchbox highly detailed cockpit floor piece (dark blue) and the not so much different Italeri version (grey). Another Italeri masterpiece - can´t even use as a template as the opening is on the wrong side!

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Edited by vppelt68
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This is quickly turning into a not that good a model build... but I´ll finish it anyway. It would´ve been better to build this OOB but that´s history now. This is the first time I´ve tried acrylic spray painting as there´s no way I could´ve brushed all that white paint on! First I sprayed the Tamiya matt white and then brushed on the Vallejo black. I had nothing in acrylics that are even close to RLM 65 / DN-väri so I had to mix Vallejo Game Colour Magic Blue, Model Colour Matt White and black, and I must say the colour I got isn´t that bad. It´s just the paintjob that isn´t that good ;-). Now I need to go shopping for some factory produced acrylic yellow.

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I don´t have a pic of her in all whites.

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That nose glazing needs some good fresh ideas though.

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A finnish version of "when the hell freezes over" is "when the cows learn to fly"...

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I think the upper cowlings and nacelle fairings will be painted green... Thanks for watching, sorry for hurting your eyes! Regards, V-P

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