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ZVEZDA 1:48 IL-2 single seater


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10 hours ago, Tbolt said:

Great looking Il-2. I just hope Zevzda give us a straight winged two seater as well.

It's coming. Although exporting it as well, Zvezda decided to do the single seater first, presumably motivated by national sentiment as a Russian company making a kit for the domestic market of a Soviet aircraft which was so important to their early and mid war effort,. As someone here mentioned earlier "I didn't even know that there was a single seat version of this". Inarguably the initial single seater variant is less familiar to the lay modeller as so many prominent brand market penetration kits with glamorous box art impacting the psyche of westerners in their formative years e.g. Airfix's 1964 IL-2M3 in 1/72, or even latter years Tamiya's IL-2M3 of 2012 in 1/48 have been of the two seater. I recall Academy releasing a single seater ski variant in 1/48 in 2012 (an Accurate Miniatures repop) coinciding with Tamiya's release. 

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1 hour ago, Troy Smith said:

Eduard did a unique boxing the Accurate Miniatures kit  which was a straight wing 2 seater,  https://www.scalemates.com/kits/eduard-8165-il-2m-shturmovik--100932

 but that was ages ago and is probably now a 'collectors item' but it just used the single seater straight wing with 2 seater arrow fuselage.

Yes I spotted that too Troy when I went to Scalemates to check out the provenance of the Academy kit. Although SCM mentions a 2006 release, My interest in plastic was rekindled circa in 2009, but I've never seen Eduard repop another batch since that sole (?) 2006 release. Surmising that like most Soviet WWII air or armour subjects, it jus t didn't sell well into western markets where every second sale must be of some variant of Spitfire, Mustang or Sherman -German armour subjects dominating overall notwithstanding in that genre. 

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I have that Eduard 'kit-bash', and you can build a nice straight-winged two-seater with it, but it will still be nice to see Zvezda do a new-mould kit.

 

Regards,

 

Jason

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IL-2s with metal fuselage were very rare. The first 300 or so single seaters and some post war/veteran late two seater were built/had the fuselage replaced with metal ones. The latter mainly in Yugoslavia. 

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That is true - the vast majority of Il-2s of all three major versions had the wooden rear fuselage. Something about 60% or so had metal-covered wings, however. Most of the single-seaters and arrows had all-metal wings, whereas most of the straight-winged two-seaters had wooden-covered wings, about 60%. It would appear that Zavod 18, the main Il-2 factory, which produced around 40% of all Il-2s, built most or all of their Il-2s with the metal-covered wings. Sergey Ilyushin, the chief designer, did not like the wooden-covered wings as they added about 200 lbs to the structure, were more easily damaged, and were harder to repair. He much preferred the all-metal wings.

 

Regards,

 

Jason

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6 hours ago, Josip said:

IL-2s with metal fuselage were very rare. The first 300 or so single seaters and some post war/veteran late two seater were built/had the fuselage replaced with metal ones. The latter mainly in Yugoslavia. 

 

Yes not as prolific, but AM did it on the single seater in 1/48th and 1/72nd ( the later done by Academy ) but strangely never did the wooden fuselage version, maybe a lack of understanding of the type as most of the decals seem to be for the wooden fuselage aircraft, but Zevzda have now fixed that for us. Now we just need them to produce a Yak-7!

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Actually that wasn't a bad thing. Very early single seaters, that were only introduced in the service in spring 1941, had metal fuselages. The trouble is in details. They had armoured glass behind the pilot and slightly different cockpit hoods that Zvezda provides. Zvezda should do the metal fuselage and we could fill panel lines or not, according to our preferences. Just like the wings on Eduard Mustang. 

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