Weird Dora

[Enzo the Magnificent]

One thing that always surprises me about FW190s is the sheer range of variants, roles and camouflage schemes.  I always think of the 190 as a fighter, but it was also widey employed as a dedicated ground attack aircraft eventually replacing the Ju 87 in that role.  I have never built an F or G variant. 

 

The 190 and its derivative, the Ta152, stayed in production until the very end of the war.  Goodness knows how the Focke Wulf engineers managed to do that.  There were very many problems with resource supply and production.  It's clear that towards the end there were many compromises made.    This build will represent one of them. 

 

The factory at Mimetall possibly had problems with paint supply.  Their FW 190D-9 aircraft were produced in overall RLM 76 light grey with a disruptive pattern of RLM 81 brown.  At this point in the war, Luftwaffe camouflage was intended to prevent observation while on the ground which explains the re-introduction of greens and brown.  It is hard to see how such a high contrast pattern would have had any camouflage benefits but, as I've said before, needs must when the devil vomits into your kettle.   .

 

Mimetall also had production problems with the 190D tail unit, so they ended up fitting Ta152 tail units to at least three aircraft - probably more.  Eduard released a 1/48 kit to represent these very late war aircraft.

 

Two of their Ta152 schemes are well documented.  The third is only documeted by written records, not photographs, so this is slightly more speculative.  However, it is this one that I will build.  The aircraft was assigned to 9./KG(J) 27, which was a bomber unit with the pilots retrained to fly fighter aircraft.  These KG(J) units had distinctive RV markings with the colours in checks rather than stripes. It is possible that the unit carried these markings on their Doras - their A-9 aircraft certainly did.  So that's how I will represent the model.

 

I know I'm starting this late with only four weeks to go so let's hope I can focus with all my other builds in progress.

 

 

 

[Enzo the Magnificent]

Sprue photos taken from my other D-9 build in this GB.

 

 

The original fuselage parts are still included.  The decal sheet provides two options for aircraft with standard tail fins, one of which is shown in the background on the box art.

 

 

 

 

 

The new fuselage parts are moulded in a different colour.

 

[Walter]

Is that a combination of old tool new tool I wonder

[Enzo the Magnificent]

14 minutes ago, Walter said:

Is that a combination of old tool new tool I wonder

 

It's the standard 190D kit with an extra sprue.  The original, difficult to build A series was followed by a new tool Dora. which was a great deal easier to build, however there were still issues with the wing gunbay doors.  I think the D kit parts breakdown informed the new tool A series, which is a joy to build.

[Troy Smith]

2 hours ago, Enzo the Magnificent said:

It is hard to see how such a high contrast pattern would have had any camouflage benefits

it's about breaking up regular shapes.    A high contrast scheme is going to be better at this than plain RLM 76 OR plain RLM 81,  note though they did often camouflage the UC doors with an upper colour, as they tended to show up.

The factory scheme could, and was altered at unit level,  and famous example if Yellow 10, the Fw190D-13,  which has field added green mottle.

 

the camo patterns and colour were reasonably consistent to manufacturer and production batch, but as there were many, there are many variations.

 

example from https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235123030-late-war-focke-wulf-fw-190-d-colours/#comment-4644327

 

 

from one of the JaPo book, that are sadly long OOP and command silly money as the linked thread shows.   Note different style of crosses as well.

I don't have the Crandall book to compare, I got very very lucky and picked the JaPo books cheap via a sale on here a few years ago.

 

 

2 hours ago, Enzo the Magnificent said:

The 190 and its derivative, the Ta152, stayed in production until the very end of the war.  Goodness knows how the Focke Wulf engineers managed to do that. 

 

They were a priority industry.    Bear in mind German aircraft production PEAKED in Sep 44,  after  18 months of bombing, as the efforts for total war production by Speer's Todt organisation, and plans were made to disperse production to make it harder to disrupt, and they used a lot of slave labour.

And build quality and reliability also dropped as a result, but the big block was fuel.   

 

2 hours ago, Enzo the Magnificent said:

The aircraft was assigned to 9./KG(J) 27, which was a bomber unit with the pilots retrained to fly fighter aircraft.  These KG(J) units had distinctive RV markings with the colours in checks rather than stripes. It is possible that the unit carried these markings on their Doras - their A-9 aircraft certainly did.  So that's how I will represent the model.

sounds great.   I've seen Bf109 and Me262 with the checked bands, I don't recall seeing a Fw190, but I've not gone hunting. 

 

 

 

[81-er]

This sounds like a really interesting project, Enzo, I'll look forward to watching this one come together. Four weeks you say? That's got to be another half-a-dozen builds at your rate, surely?  

 

James

[Retired Bob]

Nice project Enzo, I have tried a new way of fitting the the inboard gun covers on these d-9 kits.  I have filled the wing opening with some plastic card and thinned the gun covers right down, this allows the covers to be fitted flush into the fuselage without the wing openings pulling them out of alignment.

[Enzo the Magnificent]

10 minutes ago, Retired Bob said:

Nice project Enzo, I have tried a new way of fitting the the inboard gun covers on these d-9 kits.  I have filled the wing opening with some plastic card and thinned the gun covers right down, this allows the covers to be fitted flush into the fuselage without the wing openings pulling them out of alignment.

I am doing something similar with this kit.  I have carved the plastic away from the rear part of the gun bays, just where the plastic is thinned out.  I have also thinned down the wing covers.  I have then fitted them in place and packed them underneath with Milliput.  Hopefully this will provide a configuaration similar to that of the wings in the new tool A series kits.

 

If it all turns to worms, I have some Quickboost resin doors as a backup.

[Enzo the Magnificent]

First step is to build the main gear bays.  In addition to the wing surfaces, there are 14 parts in this assembly.

 

 

On to the cockpit and engine assembly.   The D series aircraft had the engine bay open to the gear bay, so the kit provides a nice representation of the rear of the engine.

 

 

 

 

 

The engine bay is rather busy.

 

[Enzo the Magnificent]

Fuselage closed up and ready for main assembly.

 

 

One thing to note is that I cut away all of the sections of the wing gun bays in the fuselage.  It makes things easier both when assemblng the airframe and when fitting the gun bay doors.

 

 

Although I have a set of Quickboost resin closed doors, I thought I would attempt to use the kit doors.  I filed down the internal ribbing and cut out the uppersurface of the wing behind the gunbays.  I then cemented the closed doors in place and packed the area underneath them with Milliput.  It worked quite well.

 

 

Ready for priming.

 

 

 

[Enzo the Magnificent]

Windscreen fitted and masked. All openings masked.  I then applied a pre-prime coat of lacquer followed by grey plastic prikmer from a rattle can.

 

 

The rear fuselage was then sprayed with white plastic primer from a rattle can and the RV bands were masked.

 

[Enzo the Magnificent]

The green squares were then sprayed using Lifecolor UA-146.    Some of the green lifted when I removed the masking, which I resprayed.  However I have an odd feeling that the green will lift again when I mask it, so I sprayed a couple of coats of clear lacquer to see if I could minimise the damage.

 

 

I have also sprayed the wing uppersurfaces with Xtracrylix XA1208 RLM 76.

 

[jackroadkill]

She's coming on well, Enzo.  Cracking job!

 

On 21/03/2023 at 20:37, Enzo the Magnificent said:

one of which is shown in the background on the box art.

 

That's one I'm building for this GB!

[Enzo the Magnificent]

The next step was to spray the fuselage and disruptive camouflage.  The Eduard instructions don't mention it but the rudder is clearly a different grey from the fuselage.  So I chose to represent the fuselage in the odd badly mixed RLM 76 colour.  For this I used Lifecolor UA-139 which is billed as "RLM unknown".  The intention here was to have the colour look different to that on my other Dora build.  The disruptive camouflage and fuselage uppersurfaces are Xtracrylix XA1210 RLM 81.

 

In the event, the UA-139 turned out to be almost identical to the mix I had made for the previous build.  The Eduard instructions show it as more of a neutral grey.  On removing the masking from the RV band it became apparent that I had the proportions totally wrong.

 

 

So the model now has a date with a piece of 600 grade wet and dry, followed by another visit to the paint shop.

 

 

[Retired Bob]

3 hours ago, Enzo the Magnificent said:

So the model now has a date with a piece of 600 grade wet and dry, followed by another visit to the paint shop.

I've had problems with my 'weird' tailed Dora as well, the Mr Color RLM 81 was very olive rather than brown, the blue/gray RLM 76 on the wings was ok but the 'sky' greenish RLM 76 looked awful with the other colours so, like you, I have sanded it back and I'm respraying it using Vallejo late war colours.  Good luck with yours. 

[81-er]

It's a shame you got the proportions wrong, it looked nice. It's not going to take long to fix at the rate you build though!

 

James

[Enzo the Magnificent]

That's much better!

 

 

[Enzo the Magnificent]

Main decals applied.  Stencils still to come.

 

[Enzo the Magnificent]

Greeblies painted up and ready for fitment.

 

 

 

[Enzo the Magnificent]

Finished!

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's a weird camouflage scheme but I rather like it.

 

 

[81-er]

Another cracker. I'm liking the oddness of it as well

 

James