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Advice needed to build an Il-2


Giorgio N

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Need help from the experts of Soviet WW2 types, in particular on the famousl Il-2

For a number of reasons I ended up with 3 kits in the stash, that I believe all come from the same mould: the Toko Il-2M3, the Zvezda Il-2 Model 1942 and the Zvezda Il-2 "tank hunter".

Now since the Il-2 is a type that would really deserve being present in any modeller's collection I feel that it's the time to build at least one for a starter. So I trawled the web for information on the type and found this very useful page:

 

https://massimotessitori.altervista.org/sovietwarplanes/pages/il-2/il-2.htm

 

I then started looking for information on the kit and if I understand right the situation is this:

 

- The kit was originally moulded by Toko, with Zvezda reboxing the kit later.

- The "1942 model" is the two-seater variant with the straight outer wing that however Toko moulded after the metal covered variant.

- Metal covered straight metal covered outer panel wings were only present on aircraft built by one particular plant (Zavod 18)

- Metal and wooden panel wings differ only in panel lines and the landing light cover shape so modifying one into the other should not be a big problem.. or is it ?

- The Toko Il-2m3 is the variant with swept outer wing panels, that again Toko moulded after the metal covered ones

- Metal covered and swepts outer wing panels were present again on aircrat built by Zavod 18 but were later used on aircraft from all plants.

- The so called "tank hunter" in the Zvezda box should be a swept wing with gun pods, however this variant did not enter service. What entered service was a straight wing with the same pods.. meaning I could take the pods from the box and use them on the 1942 model

 

Now what do the experts think of my conclusions ? If they are correct it seems to me that I can build both a straight wing, with or without underwing pods, and a swept wing. Should I decide to build a Zavod 18 built aircraft I don't have to change much and the same would apply to a late war built Il-2. If I want to reproduce a wooden wing aircraft, then I have to modify the panel lines. Of course I may have to change other details in the kit in case these are not reproduced correctly  or not correct for the subvariant... and as I know pretty much nothing about the subject I'll be glad to hear any advice or information on how well this kit represents the real aircraft.

I should add that I may have already identified a couple of potential subjects, all Zavod 18 built aircraft used by 198 ShAP with black numbers over white tails, that would allow me to simply print my own decals for the individual numbers, so avoiding any problem with potentially wrong decals in the box.

 

In terms of general quality of the kit, what I gathered from a few reviews is that the cockpit and wheel wells are the weakest points and need some additional detail. I see that Part from Poland have a pretty extensive PE sheet for the cockpit at a decent price. IIRC I've seen a Neomega resin cockpit that was however a bit on the expensive side (justified by Neomega's quality but as the Il-2 isn't my favourite subject I may not be inclined to spend too much). I may just use the Part PE sheet for the cockpit and see what may be added from scratch in the wheel wells. I'm not aiming at a superdetailed kit but just at a decent reproduction of what was after all one of the most important aircraft in the history of aviation...

 

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The only SMER Il2 I know about is the single seater, which is their own tooling.  It doesn't seem to have anything that looks like the Vista style of the Fulmar to me...  it is considerably finer in part thickness, surface detail, and number of parts.  The Vista Fulmar, apart from being pretty accurate in Outline, is more like Matchbox on a poor day.

 

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The Smer kit is a nice kit, and the only single-seater that has both the metal wings represented, and the wooden rear fuselage, as other kits of the single-seater are either 'wooden-winged' (the nice Dakoplast kit and its re-boxings), or have the metal rear fuselage (the rather nice Academy kit, for example), that was used only early in the war. However, let's look at the Toko/Zvezda offerings. Giorgio, I believe you have a good understanding of these kits. Massimo's page on the Il-2 is very good (he did the illustrations for my Il-2 book), and gives a very good overview of the different versions of the Il-2. Regarding the kit itself, in terms of general shape, it's pretty good. The wings and fuselage measure out just about right. The fuselage looks a bit fat to me, viewed from above, so you might reduce it by about 1mm on the centreline for a slimmer appearance. The under fuselage radiator is the worst aspect of the kit (it is too shallow), but short of rebuilding it, I just kept it as is for the several Toko/Zvezda kits I built. On the other hand, the spinner and propeller blades are better than the Academy and Smer kits, and about on par with the excellent Tamiya kit of the 'arrow'. The clear parts are rather thick, but are quite clear, and easy to paint. When built up, the Toko/Zvezda kits certainly look like Shturmoviks (I can see one from where I'm typing this). I have the Part set, and it is very extensive, as well as the NeOmega set, although I've not used either. Without some sort of work, the cockpit is rather bare on these kits, so you might give the Part set a go, if you don't mind using photo-etched. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

 

Best Regards,

 

Jason

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1 hour ago, tempestfan said:

Have you been here ? Not sure if it tells you anything you don't know already, though... BTW, the Smer kit looked rather nice, similar to their née Vista Fulmar in style.

 

Thanks, I have looked at the page and part of the information I found on the Toko kit comes from there

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19 minutes ago, Learstang said:

The Smer kit is a nice kit, and the only single-seater that has both the metal wings represented, and the wooden rear fuselage, as other kits of the single-seater are either 'wooden-winged' (the nice Dakoplast kit and its re-boxings), or have the metal rear fuselage (the rather nice Academy kit, for example), that was used only early in the war. However, let's look at the Toko/Zvezda offerings. Giorgio, I believe you have a good understanding of these kits. Massimo's page on the Il-2 is very good (he did the illustrations for my Il-2 book), and gives a very good overview of the different versions of the Il-2. Regarding the kit itself, in terms of general shape, it's pretty good. The wings and fuselage measure out just about right. The fuselage looks a bit fat to me, viewed from above, so you might reduce it by about 1mm on the centreline for a slimmer appearance. The under fuselage radiator is the worst aspect of the kit (it is too shallow), but short of rebuilding it, I just kept it as is for the several Toko/Zvezda kits I built. On the other hand, the spinner and propeller blades are better than the Academy and Smer kits, and about on par with the excellent Tamiya kit of the 'arrow'. The clear parts are rather thick, but are quite clear, and easy to paint. When built up, the Toko/Zvezda kits certainly look like Shturmoviks (I can see one from where I'm typing this). I have the Part set, and it is very extensive, as well as the NeOmega set, although I've not used either. Without some sort of work, the cockpit is rather bare on these kits, so you might give the Part set a go, if you don't mind using photo-etched. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

 

Best Regards,

 

Jason

 

Thanks for all the information Jason, I had forgotten about your book... hope you don't mind if I'll use the drawings on Massimo's page as basis for my builds.

Sound like I have at least a sound basis for my build. I'll see if I can sort the width of the fuselage, should not be difficult however it will depend on any potential impact on the fit of the canopy-

The radiator sounds loke something I may be able to address, I'll check pictures to see what solution is the easiest.

Regadring the cockpit, since the Part sheet comes at less than a fiver from a Polish shop, I'll give it a go. I don't mind PE parts, although I know from experience that Part sheets are crammed with very small and hard to handle details.

 

I will sure ask more questions, for example about the colours used. I've seen a few threads on this same forum so I'll go through all these first (no need to ask the same questions again if they've already been answered).

In the meantime I checked the various options in the Toko decal sheet and found that most are shown in Massimo's page. These are:

- White 1 of 6th GvOShAP, a Zavod 1 bult aircraft carrying an eagle as insignia. The artwork on the decal is not as detailed as the drawing shows unfortunately. "3-D" stars are correctly included in the sheet for this option but I'm not sure the colour is good.

- White 7 of 566 ShAP with inscriptions and a unit emblem carrying the name "Za Leningrad". Now this is listed in the page as possibly built by Zavod 18, therefore could be built straight from the box. The insignia looks pretty good on the decal sheet and this is now another potential subject for my build

- Black 2 of 198 ShAP, piloted by Capt. Yefimov. This is one of the machines that initially drew my attention. The 2 is IMHO printed too wide on the decal sheet but I can replace this with a home-printed one

- Maybe in the page is Blue 22.. i say maybe because the page shows an aircraft with the same inscription "Chapayevtsky" but the picture does not show any number. Maybe the sheet represents another aircraft from the same unit. This should be a Zavod 1 built machine.

The last option, and the one shown on the boxart, is Yellow 25, unit not mentioned, with a red band around the fuselage after the canopy.

 

All aircraft are in the 3-colour upper camo scheme of green/grey/brown according to the webpage while Toko instructions are hard to understand as they are all in Cyrillic... a 3 color scheme is suggested for Black 2, a 2 colour(green/brown) is suggested for Yellow 25. I'm not sure what they suggest for the other options...

-

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I built my Toko arrow as 'White 24', from an AM set of decals (I did mine as a wooden-winged aircraft - the plastic was thick enough that I was able to sand down to where the plastic was level with no panel lines). Remember that most of the swept-winged arrow versions of the Il-2, about two-thirds by my calculations, were metal-winged.

 

Regards,

 

Jason

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17 hours ago, Learstang said:

Remember that most of the swept-winged arrow versions of the Il-2, about two-thirds by my calculations, were metal-winged.

 

Regards,

 

Jason

 

This is very good to know Jason, expands a lot on the potential subjects I can build without having to remove panel lines from the wings

As the host of the Group Build has accepted the Il-2 as eligible, I will soon start a build thread.

 

Thanks again !

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What is the general opinion of the Tamiya version folks? 

I've just done the Zveda / Toko Re - box and kept wishing I'd gone for the Tamiya version.   Avenger version peruse ready for inspection if you wish..  Likely not up to your high standards. GIORGIO.. 

I got the Zveda kit some time ago and in my naivety as it was a Russian manufacturered expected it to be spot on. 

Yes, before I discovered Scalemates..  Oh and this excellent site.  😁 How wrong you can be.. 😁 

 

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The Tamiya kit is the best kit of the Il-2 in 1/72nd scale. It has excellent surface and good interior detail. It is not perfect, but no kit is. For example it has little detail on the cockpit walls, and the shell link ejector chutes should both be on the port side of the longer shell casing chutes, instead of both being on the inside of the chutes (I may be a bit unclear here, but if you really want a better explanation, I know of a certain book which goes into it in more detail...). Despite these quibbles, it is an excellent kit, and goes together well. It is the best choice for an arrow (swept-winged two-seater Il-2) in 1/72nd scale.

 

Best Regards,

 

Jason 

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