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Dragon Do 335 Night Fighter - The Last Stand


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The Last Stand

 

The story of this plane is scant to say the least it seams that there are no direct accounts of any kind relating to the plane or the Pilot. Any information available is third person accounts  This plane was flown by Dieter Hafner.  It is unlikely he flew many missions given the late entry of this plane in the war. Dieter jumped over to this plane from the Do 217 N and was closely linked to the Top Secret plans to introduce a Night Fighter variant. Even given the production issues Dornier was facing somehow Dieter convinced them to produce at least one plane with the latest FuG system that he had tested and used on the Do217. Given the close relationship he had with Dornier he knew about the new project that Dornier was working on and perhaps it was this long relationship that allowed him to persuade the company to produce this one off variant based on a trainer version of the single seat fighter. The level of involvement he had may have been is not known for sure but he was known by his peers to be very demanding and persistent. After visiting the factory many times the production team may have just relented and equipped a trainer version with radar. When the plane was almost ready they contacted Dieter to let him know that it would be ready in a week once it was painted. In this conversation it is rumoured that he requested and perhaps even insisted that the paint colours need to be different to the others, insisting on the colours you see below. The factory was very reluctant to do this as it was not protocol but at this point in the war he could care less about Luftwaffe protocol.  Under wing gondola cannons were to be added however Dieter could not wait for that modification and needed to get the plane into the air and into action, they were to be added at a later date. 

 

Perhaps the top secret nature of the project at the time and its late entry into the war is the reason why there is no information on the history of this plane. Nor is there any information as to what happened to this plane at the end of the war, whether it survived the war or was shot down nobody knows. No records exist on missions or kill statistics.

 

This Dragon kit had a lot of fit issues, quite a difficult project for me with a few mistakes by me as well, especially on the canopy. This is an old kit so I didn't use the decals supplied, instead I used Peddinghaus Decals. Anyway here it is and thanks for looking.

 

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Edited by Walter
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7 hours ago, billn53 said:

Excellent! Looks like you beat this old kit into submission. 

Haha it felt like that sometimes, my most man handled build so far. Lots of fun with this one I could easily build another one in a different variant. This one just had to be a little different as all the models I've seen are all the same. 🙄

Edited by Walter
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