What
if, Germany hade won the battle of the Bulge and the Allies where thrown back to
the sea and had to evacuate.
To
help the Russians they would send more convoys to Murmansk. To spot these
convoys for their submarine fleet, the Germans used their new reconnaissance
aircraft. This was the Dornier Do 635.
I
know it is just my imagination, but it’s something for a great project, and
here it is, my Dornier Do 635 in 1/48.
It
was converted from two Tamiya’s Do 335’s.
It
took me some 6 months to build it. There are some resin sets which I used in it.
They where the cockpit set from Aires (nr 4101), the Fuel fuselage tank and the
engine set from CMK (nr 4086 and 4085) and I used the extended wingset from
Paragon (nr 48064).
The
model was inspired by the book of the Do 335 from Aviatic verlag in Germany.
There were some drawings in it and some text whom I did use.
It
was a plane intended for reconnaissance over the Atlantic to spot convoys for
their submarines. The first plans for this aircraft was discussed by the RLM (Reichs
Luftfahr Ministerie) in 1943. The plans where to produce 5 aircraft a month
starting in may 1945. It was fast enough (725 km/h) to outrun the beaufighter
and the mosquito. It had a range of 7600 km.
The
right fuselage was build out of the box. The left fuselage was changed to accommodate
the cockpit set, fuselage tank set and the engine set.
After
this was done, did I changed the outside wings to accommodate the Heinkel wings
from Paragon. This set is originally for the Monogram kit, but after some
measuring (by putting the outer wing to the Tamiya wing to know where the right
point was for the connection) and dry fitting it could be glued together.
Then
came the most difficult part of the conversion. The centre wing.
The
centre wing had to be scratch built. With the use of the inner part of the left
and right wing (just after the wheel bays) and some plastic sheet and plastic
rods was the wing mainly build. Plastic beams were used in the main construction
of the wing, to get a good solid wing. I used a blown up drawing to get the
right distance and the right angle for the wing to both fuselages (it is
important to get a angle of 90 degrees between the wing and the left and right
fuselage). With the beams connected to the left and right fuselage I could begin
to build up the wing with the inner parts of the original wing. After some
days of good drying, I finished the wing with plastic sheet, a copper rod, for
the wing front, and a lot of putty. Two
weeks later, I began the sanding and more putty and more sanding and then finally
was the wing ready. Then it was just building as normal.
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Now
was it time for painting. This big airplane now had a span of almost 60
centimeter, so I needed a lot of paint. The paint I use is almost always from
Tamiya. I painted the underside RLM 76 and the upperside RLM 72 and RLM 73
(these are the maritime colours). After some days of good drying, I
masked the parts of the airplane and painted these white, like you use to see in
some pictures of German maritime airplanes. At the same time, I painted on
the German crosses with the help of paintmasks from a set for the He 177 (1/72)
from Eduard. Then it was time to paint the aircraft with Future for the decals.
After two days of drying, came the time to put the few decals on the airplane.
These came from a decal sheet from Xtradecal and some modified Dutch decals. The
swastika’s came out of the box.
After
another coat of Future it was time for the panellines. This was done by a
mixture of Tamiya paint, water and some dishwash luquid. I got this idea out of
the fine scale modeller. After another day of drying, it was time to put
the final coat of matt varnish (testors) on the airplane.
The
Do 635 was standing for over a week to dry. Then it was time to finish it, by
putting the modified main wheels on (making the middle legs a bit shorter, to
get all the main wheels to hit the surface) and all the little parts
that were left.
This
was a huge project for me, but it was worth it.
This
project was built for the 40th birthday of IPMS UK (Scale modelworld) in 2003.
This model won the Hypothetical aircraft class (23) as well as the Mushroom
model publications Award. I enjoyed it so much that I am going to do
another project just like this for the next scale modelworld show in 2004.
Arnold
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