Airfix Dornier Do.17Z (A05010A) 1:72

[Mike]

Dornier Do.17Z (A05010A)

1:72 Airfix

 

 

The Dornier Do 17, nicknamed the Fliegender Bleistift or flying pencil due to its slender fuselage, was a light bomber designed by Dornier Flugzeugwerke in the mid-1930s. Along with the Heinkel He 111, the Do 17 carried out the lion’s share of bombing raids against the UK up to the end of the Battle of Britain. The Do 17Z was the main production variant and featured a redesigned forward fuselage that was enlarged with an underslung gondola in order to accommodate a rear gunner.  The Z-2 sub-variant featured new 1000hp engines that addressed an earlier problem with underpowered units, enabling the bomb load to be doubled from 500kgs to 1000kgs, but this increased load limited combat radius to 210 miles with a standard fuel load.  For the crew there were additional side firing guns, however as the three guns in the gondola were served by one gunner he couldn’t serve all of them at the same time, limiting their effectiveness.  After heavy losses over Britain the machine guns were replaced with heavier MG 151/15 cannons for more stopping power.  Many former bombers were later modified with solid Ju.88 noses containing guns as night fighters, where speed and bomb load didn’t really matter, letting them install additional fuel in the bay for longer loiter time in their assigned box.

 

 

The Kit

This is a reboxing of the 2014 tool of this type, and is a product of the revived Airfix, and is very well detailed for the scale.  The instructions give their thanks to the RAF Museum and a gentleman named Ian Thirsk for their help in creating the kit, and looking over the instruction booklet gives the impression of a kit larger than its scale, speaking as a 1:48 modeller normally.  It arrives in a slender red-themed top-opening box, and inside are a generous four sprues of parts in grey styrene, plus a separately bagged sprue of clear parts, decal sheet and the instruction booklet that has colour profiles on the rear pages.  Detail is good, and there are multiple options available to customise your model to suit yourself, as well as wheels up and wheels down options.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Construction begins with the cockpit, which is well-detailed with a large number of parts and a choice of angular or curved pilot’s seat, side consoles with spare ammo cans for the defensive armament, control column and a crew of four, all of whom have their left hands on their laps, and their right arms as separate parts to allow you to pose them.  The pilot’s seat is built on a raised platform and slots into the port fuselage half, as does the tail-wheel assembly in retracted position, or it is left off until later to be installed externally.  Two more crew seats are inserted lower down in the cockpit, then the fuselage can be closed up, removing a small tab inside the oval cut-out in front of the tail wheel.  The final seat is a 3-part affair that faces aft in the rear of the cockpit, and is inserted after closure to be followed by the rear glazing of the gondola, which has a circular window moulded in and a hole for a machine gun.  The instrument panel with decal is glued to the front of the fuselage, and a C-shaped assembly that is made earlier with tons of ammo cans around the walls slots into place boxing out the rear seater’s area and forming the front bulkhead of the bomb bay.  The bay is next to be detailed, having three cross-braces added, two of which are the main wing spar sections, and these are joined by a rear bay insert and a small window that is inserted from within.  The bay roof is created (see the pic below) when the upper wing is glued onto the fuselage as a solitary part, leaving the rest of the wing to be built in-situ.  The upper wing is offered up to the aperture’s leading-edge angled down so that it fits properly, and alignment is key here as it will be highly visible.  The lower wings are prepared with aft bulkheads to the main gear bays before they are joined with the upper wings on the fuselage in advance of creating the engine nacelles.

 

 

 

Each nacelle is made from two halves that drop into place around the bay roof, then have a front bulkhead inserted, having the tapering fairing with exhaust collector ring and two inserts put together and mated to the front ready for the engines.  Each engine has the bank of cylinders moulded as a single part to which you add the intakes and ancillaries at the rear, and the bell-housing with stators at the front.  They are fixed to the collector rings and have the three-piece cowlings slipped over the engine and around the twin exhausts that exit over the top of the wings.  A T-shaped insert closes the top of the cowlings, locking in the exhausts for posterity.  The elevator fins are made of three parts into a single assembly that can have its angle of incidence altered by up to 15°, and the elevators themselves are a single full-span part that can be deflected up by 24° and down by 22°, and have inserts underneath for the actuators, and two-part rudders at each end.  You’re not given a degree value for the rudders though, so make your own investigations.  The flying surfaces of the main planes are all separate, and building them begins with the flaps, which you can install deployed using a shortened aft-section of the nacelle, or ‘clean’ by removing the hinges and choosing the full rear section of the nacelle.  The process is repeated in mirror-image on the other wing, and the two ailerons are added with 20° deflection possible in either direction.

 

For a flying model you simply plate over the gear bays with single parts that have a panel line down the middle to depict the two doors, making your life and alignment very much easier.  For the landed Pencil, the H-shaped gear legs with sections of the spar are inserted into the bays, then backed up by linked retraction jacks with a mudguard near the lower end, the angle of which is shown in a side diagram for each one.  The wheels have flat-spots moulded-in, and are each made of two halves that flex-fit between the gear legs.  The bays are finished off by a pair of doors attached to the sides on hinge pegs.

 

The closed bomb bay is achieved simply by adding the one-part doors over the aperture after deciding whether you will drill two holes for an Airfix stand.  For the open bomb bay, there are four ladders with five bombs each, or two larger bombs on their own mounts that sit centrally with the empty ladders to each side.  If you want to depict your Dornier on a long-distance raid, you can insert a two-part ancillary fuel tank in the front of the bomb bay, sacrificing either two ladders of smaller bombs, or the front large bomb and two empty ladders.  Each option has a scrap diagram to show how it should look on completion.  The bay is finished off with two bay doors on three hinge pegs, then it’s time to put some glass in your Pencil.  There’s a new twist on an old saying!  The faceted nose dome has a machine gun with twin mags pushed through the hole near the middle, and the main glazing has another two, one offset at the front, the other in a ring at the rear.  Another gun slips through the glazing in the rear of the gondola from above, while the front is glazed with another angled section that has the crew hatch between them, either left open for access, or with the hinge snipped off to pose it closed.  When installed, the main canopy has an antenna and D/F loop inserted into holes in the roof, taking care to slip the two side-facing machine guns through the loups in the side of the cockpit before applying glue.  Four small clear panels are inserted into sockets in the upper wing centre, plus one last bit of clear that slides into a matching hole in the leading edge of the port wing.  A pitot probe is mounted next to the light, and an odd little antenna on a cylindrical base is inserted into the fuselage just behind the canopy.

 

The last job is to put the props on, which are made up from three blades moulded to a central boss that is clamped between the spinner cap and base plate, then is completed by inserting a pin through a collar and into the rear of the prop, taking care to keep the glue off the collar, and again when the collar is glued into the front of the engine’s bell-housing, leaving you with a rotating prop to play with.  There are two of them.  You got that, didn’t you?

 

 

Markings

There are two decal options in this boxing from early WWII, but in very different locations.  Both are wearing early war green splinter camouflage over RLM65 as their basic scheme.  From the box you can build one of the following:

 

• 9/Kampfgeschwader 76, Cormeilles-en-Vexim, North France, shot down on 18th August 1940 near Biggin Hill in Kent after a raid on RAF Kenley
• 1/ Kampfgeschwader 2, Menidi (Tatoi) Aerodrome, Greec, May 1941

 

 

 

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

 

 

Conclusion

A welcome re-release of what must have been a welcome modern new tooling back in 2014.  Although that’s eight years ago as of writing, it still looks plenty good for the task in hand.

 

Highly recommended.

 

 

Review sample courtesy of

 

[BerndM]

Nice review.

Its a good build so far.

[Paul H]

I'd forgotten that this included most of the crew figures, unlike many other Airfix kits which just have the pilot.  Good to see it re-released, as it certainly looks like a very decent kit.  I've yet to build mine, which I bought a few years ago (double kit with a Defiant, with the markings of the one that was recently salvaged from the Goodwin Sands).

[sroubos]

Love the box-art. I have the first release of this kit, it looks awesome in the box. I can't believe I still haven't got round to building it. Then again, there's more than one kit in my stash where that applies...

[kapam]

That's a very tasty looking kit!

I don't think of myself as a massive Dornier fan, but nice kits like this can sometimes hold sway over whether or not I'm a fan of the type.