Revell Junkers Ju.188A-2 'Racher' (03855) 1:48

[Mike]

Junkers Ju.188A-2 'Racher' (03855)

1:48 Revell

 

 

The Ju.188 has a long and confusing development as a proposed improvement to the Ju.88, which was becoming less effective against the evolving Allied fighters as time marched on.  It began life as the Ju.88B-0, but it wasn’t a major improvement, so languished in limbo because the expected Ju.288 was expected to far-outstrip it - once it was operational.  The trouble was, the 288 was having the same problem with engines that the 188 was, plus other issues that delayed it yet further.  The worsening situation with the Ju.88s triggered the RLM decision that some improvement was better than nothing, and the aircraft was given the go-ahead and officially separated from the 88 by the new Ju.188 name.  The 188 had a stepless greenhouse canopy under which the crew sat, with only the rear gunner separated by his location in the under-fuselage ‘bola’ gondola.  More delays were caused by the insistence that the aircraft be capable of mounting multiple engine types with standardised fittings in a “power-egg”, so that when the desired Jumo 213 engines finally stopped giving their engineers headaches, they could be retro-fitted quickly and easily for a healthy power increase in one easy step.  It was christened Rächer, which translates to English as Avenger, which is a little ironic really.

 

As the situation turned from attack to defence for the Reich, the bomber force saw its priority drop, with depressing consequences for the production of the new 188s, which were initially known as Ju.188A if it mounted the Jumo 213 engines, or as Ju.188E if it was powered by the BMW 801s.  The 213 equipped A-1s were slow to reach the front, and were quickly replaced by the A-2, which had acquired a methanol-water injection system to boost the engine’s power to assist heavily loaded take offs and in emergencies.  There was a torpedo bomber version that was made in small numbers, and planned variants of a number of types that never saw service thanks to the state of the war, coupled with the RLM’s focus on fighters as things got worse.  The end of the type saw the high-altitude versions being split off under the name Ju.388, only a few of which saw service.  After the war a number of captured airframes were operated by the Allies for evaluation, but none of them survived to reach museums.

 

 

The Kit

This is a re-release of the original 1994 Dragon kit by Revell, but that's no bad thing because it is a product of Dragon’s heyday, it is the only injection moulded kit of the type in this scale, and until fairly recently the kit has been harder to find as the years go by.  Someone has removed some of the Dragon logos from the sprues, but not others, so it doesn’t take an expert to guess its origins.  It arrives in a slightly-too-large top-opening box, and inside you will find thirteen sprues in grey styrene, two in clear, a small Photo-Etch (PE) fret and the instructions that hide the decals and one of those annoying safety sheets within.  The detail is good, and the only thing that gives away the age of the tooling is the slightly rough interior texture that no-one will see once the model is completed.  There is a tiny amount of flash on some of the smallest parts and a few sink marks on the wing tips for example, but if we apply a little modelling skill those will disappear under a coat of filler, especially if they’re dealt with before major construction commences.  It’s a small price to pay for a handsome Ju.188 model.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Construction begins with the cockpit, which is based on a multi-level floor part onto which the pilot’s conformal chair and the radio operator’s less impressive seat are fitted along with the radio gear and a selection of decals to depict their dials.  Rudder, control column and throttle lollipops finish off the floor, and more instruments are attached to the starboard sidewall of the nose section.  The nose is a separate assembly to the rest of the fuselage, as this part is the new section that attaches to a Ju.88 fuselage to make the Ju.188.  If you look at the fuselage sprue, the words Ju.88 are written on the header, which can also be seen on a few other sprues too.  A ‘chin-strap’ of clear plastic is attached to the front of the assembly and another at the rear with a Zwilling twin-mount machine gun projecting through the glazing for self-defence.  The tail-wheel is needed before the fuselage can be closed up, so the main strut is glued to the other three lower parts and the tail wheel is slipped between the pins inside the yoke, with a detailed bay waiting to trap it in place when the fuselage is glued, with the cockpit section fitted after the two assemblies have cured.  As usual for me, I’d be tempted to attach the cockpit walls to the fuselage sooner to minimise any chances of steps appearing between them, but that’s a decision for when the parts are off their sprues.  The big tail fin with separate rudder slots onto a large tab moulded onto the fuselage halves, making for a good join, and the elevators have separate flying surfaces with two pegs holding the fins in place, and another smaller peg for the elevator surface allowing offsetting of the whole empennage to your preference.

 

The two engine nacelles are fitted with tubular exhaust flame hiders, and the cylindrical cowling is made from two halves with a single adaptor ring that fairs them into the wings.  At the front of the nacelles the cooling flaps can be posed open or closed by using the appropriate parts, and the annular radiator hides the absence of any internal structure from the viewer.  The props are all separate parts that fix to the central boss, through which the axle fits and is secured in place by a washer that is glued carefully in place, with all that covered up by a spinner cap, and a sleeve at the rear that will slot inside the central hole in the annular radiator part.  The rest of the nacelle contains the landing gear, which is chunky and assembles onto a flat plate, using several parts before the two-part treadless wheels are glued to the axles next to the separate oleo-scissor links.  If you’d like a weighted wheel, sanding a little flat-spot in each one will do the job, or pony up for some aftermarket wheels if you prefer.  The lower wing includes the rear portion of the nacelles, and the completed gear assemblies slide into place within after you have drilled out a few flashed-over holes in the inner section for the bombs.  These are standard Ju.88 wings so far, and have separate ailerons and the Ju.188 wingtip extensions added to the flat ends using the usual slot and tab format.  With the two wings complete, the engine nacelles are glued to the front, and the ailerons and trim-tabs are completed with actuator parts, then the wings are joined to the fuselage and the under-belly insert is added to fill the gap there.   The gear bays get a set of bay doors with hinges and actuators either side of their respective apertures, before four SC500 bombs are made up and fitted to different pylons depending on their location under the wing.

 

Note that the two smaller linked sprues were separated to make photography easier.

 

The final fitting-out of the airframe includes lots of small parts, some of which could be snapped off during painting and handling.  These include the crew ladder and door at the rear of the Bolo, D/F loop, the sunrise-shaped Pielgerat (PielG) 6 antenna, plus a few other antennae, pitot probe and clear light in the leading edge of the wing.  The props and the forward portion of the engine nacelle are also fitted now, then it is time for that large, clear canopy.  Before the glazing is installed, the crew-served weapons are added first, along with their corrugated spent cartridge funnels and in the case of the forward weapon, a PE support strut.  A small instrument package with decal is glued into the highly curved forward windscreen, which is fixed by sliding the gun barrel through the hole in the lower portion.  The large rear canopy is then placed over the rest of the aperture, with the hole in the roof filled with a glass-topped turret or a simple flat clear circular panel.  The turret has the gun, cartridge chute and small turret basket underneath, which will need to be glued into position to remain in place during handling.

 

 

 

Markings

There are two options on the sheet, with some interesting schemes depicted that will no doubt terrify those that hate complex painting.  The first decal option seems to have received a replacement wing, with a blue underside and splinter upper (see above), while the flying surfaces retain the stylised crazy-paving pattern of the rest of the airframe, which has a black underside.  The second option has a squiggle pattern on its all green tail, just to test your airbrushing skills to breaking point!

 

From the box you can build one of the following:

 

• Junkers Ju.188A-2, 3E+HK, 2./KG6, Melsbroek, Belgium, October 1944
• Junkers Ju.188A-2, U5+KH, Wk.Nr. 160096, 1./KG2, Bron, France, March 1944

 

 

 

Decals were designed by House of Phantoms and are printed by Cartograf, which is a guarantee of good registration, sharpness and colour density, with a thin matt carrier film cut close to the printed areas.

 

 

Conclusion

It’s still a nice kit, and has been treated to a nice set of decal options, including instrument dials and even well-rendered decal seatbelts into the bargain.  Now, someone dissuade me from converting this to a Ju.388.

 

Highly recommended.

 

 

Revell model kits are available from all good toy and model retailers. For further information visit

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[ABeck]

A few things to add:

The prop dia seeems to be too small and there is no sufficient crank in the prop blades. Quickboost offers an attempt of improvement with set #48 265. In parallel to the re-release production for Revell Dragon threw a relatively small number of this kit under their own label on the market. It comes (came) with the old reg.no. #5517 with the same old boxart, the old fictional declas (though reprinted by Cartograf !) and the nice torpedoes which are not included in the Revell kit. I got one of these new released Dragon kits for just € 30.- from MBK, seemingly all are gone now.

[Denford]

A small point, but the name is Rächer, meaning 'Avenger'.

If you have a 'proper' keyboard, with a keypad to the right, the character (a with umlaut) can be entered by pressing Alt and 132 simultaneously.

If you can't manage that, then Raecher is an acceptable alternative.

There is no German word 'Racher'.

Gruße (greetings)

 

[Mike]

20 minutes ago, Denford said:

A small point, but the name is Rächer, meaning 'Avenger'.

If you have a 'proper' keyboard, with a keypad to the right, the character (a with umlaut) can be entered by pressing Alt and 132 simultaneously.

If you can't manage that, then Raecher is an acceptable alternative.

There is no German word 'Racher'.

Gruße (greetings)

 

 

I've set up an auto-correct on Word to convert it to the umlauted version, so it should always pick it up from today onwards.  I may have typed it in directly into the review on the forum if the offending article was in the body of the review, but I typed it deliberately as 'Racher' for the title.  The reason for that is that not many English (UK, US etc.) keyboards have easy access to the correct character and the ALT+132 is a niche bit of knowledge*, so it is more likely to show up in a search as straight letterss.  I noticed the web address showed 'Raecher', but I went with the boxtop title   Incidentally, how is it properly pronounced?

 

* I was aware of the facility, but had no idea of the unicode number.

2 hours ago, ABeck said:

The prop dia seeems to be too small and there is no sufficient crank in the prop blades. Quickboost offers an attempt of improvement with set #48 265.

I did think they looked a bit "wee", but then got distracted

[Mike]

As an aside, I've now got a Ju.388 conversion coming from AIMS, which I'm seriously tempted to build now

[Denford]

Don't seem to be able to reply 'directly' to original response but:

a (generally) hard, as in 'cat', 'sat', 'mat'.

ä (generally) soft as in 'bay', 'say' and so on.

German, at least, has 'got to grips' with the matter and for example oe is a recognised alternative to ö.

 

To help in my studies I have, beside my keyboard, an A4 sheet (held in place with BluTack) with French, German and Spanish characters.  They all require ALT followed by a 3 digit number such as 135 for ç or 164 for ñ

I believe they are from the ASCII code, and there are other 'useful' characters (which I now can't find) which often occur such as 'pi', 'beta'.  A computer buff may be able to elaborate.

[Graham Boak]

You can obviously do that, but Windows 10 has a character app that you can put on your task bar.  Which is at least a bit neater.

[Mike]

This review has taken a stange but interesting turn. @Graham Boak does it have a keyboard shortcut like the emoji bar?  That's activated by Windows Key+: or ; 

[Graham Boak]

Don't know - what's an emoji bar?  It is one of the standard Windows 10 apps, called Character Map.   It will install itself on your front page (whatever that's called) and you can drag and drop it onto your task bar, just like Edge, Chrome, Notebook, Calculator, and other useful things.  It provides help for such as scientific notation, foreign symbols, accents - yes, it is based on the ASCII system but that aspect is hidden.  You select what you want, then copy and paste into your text.

[Mike]

47 minutes ago, Graham Boak said:

Don't know - what's an emoji bar?  It is one of the standard Windows 10 apps, called Character Map.   It will install itself on your front page (whatever that's called) and you can drag and drop it onto your task bar, just like Edge, Chrome, Notebook, Calculator, and other useful things.  It provides help for such as scientific notation, foreign symbols, accents - yes, it is based on the ASCII system but that aspect is hidden.  You select what you want, then copy and paste into your text.

Press Windows Key & : together to find out   I found Character Map just by typing in the start menu.  I was just wondering if there was a Windows Key shortcut Here's the full list that I'm still reading through.

[Harold55]

Back to the task at hand I built this kit not long after it originally came out and loved it.  I  had difficulty fitting the canopy but that might just be me.  I would love to see your conversion of this kit to a Ju-388.  I would also like to see ICM come out with both the 188 & 388 but I don't see one on the horizon.  

[Mike]

13 hours ago, Harold55 said:

I would love to see your conversion of this kit to a Ju-388

Me too, but it's still in the post, so I'm waiting behind the door every morning

[BerndM]

A bit late to this party but better than never !

Thanks for the nice review with the usual crisp photos and a view on the marking schemes and decals.

 

It looks that the sprue with the nose section and the wing tips still contains the larger racks for the torpedo version and the bulge on the cockpit side seen on torpedo versions of the Ju 88/188.

That means you can convert this kit into one of the rare Ju 188 torpedo aircraft used by the KG 26 at the end of war or you can use them on a Ju 88A-4 kit.

This extra sprue is missing in my Ju 188E.

Eduard has Brassin torpedoes out, as well they can be found in ICMs He 111H-6 or the Ju 88A-4/torp kits.

AIMS has a pe set out containing the FuG 200 antennas and the mountings. ( correct me if i am wrong  )

Also your shortage of late Ju 88C-6/G canopies is over 🤪