Background

This model depicts one of those drawing board machines that appears to be the trend these days for kit manufacturers. This model is of a long range German bomber that was planned. The bomber was supposed to be able to travel from Germany and bomb America. The Germans must have figured that after conquering Europe that North America would be the next goal. The box art shows the plane flying over New York.

The plane seats 3. There are 2 forward seats for I would guess the pilot and the forward gunner/ bomber. There is a rear facing seat for the upper turret and I would guess he also controls the rear turret by remote control.

The kit

The kit is a new tool and this shows with excellent fit of parts and recessed panel lines. Since this was going to be a quick build I did not use the landing gear. I also thought that the landing gear made the plane look bulky and destroyed the lines of the model. The landing gear looks similar to the type in the Horton, big and bulky. There aren't many parts to the kit. The main body is just a top and lower half. There are no poseable flaps. The upper turret and rear gun are movable.

The cockpit is fairly simple. I painted the clear parts with Tamiya smoked so you can not see much in the cockpit. For this reason I painted the interior silver. I know this plane is supposed to be a bomber flying over the ocean but I did not like the paint scheme recommended in the kit. I used a paint scheme that is more similar to those seen on German tanks. Since this is a fictitious plane I decided to have fun with the paint scheme. The base colour on top is tamiya Desert Yellow. The green is a Testors dark green and I threw in some Tamiya Hull Red for some variety.

The decals in the kit look good but I could not get the yellow ones to sit down. I tried Solvaset but it just sat there. I thought the yellow accents on the wings would add some colour to the model but this plan died. Just to be safe I trimmed off all the clear decal film before putting the decals on . The kit came with quite a few decals for warning lines, fuel panels, markings, nose art etc. I didn't use 95% of them because I thought it would make the model not look as good. I just added the crosses and the vertical wing markings.

I also did not fill in the panel lines or weather the model. I have seen people heavily weather the panel lines and the model looks unrealistic.

As a nice touch parts of the clear parts also have recessed panel lines.

Overall a fun kit to build but I was very surprised at the size of the kit. You would think the model was a 1:144 kit instead of 1:72. Looking at the model by itself you think it would look huge, but placed beside another 1:72 kit and it looks very small. I built a 1:72 Dash 8 and the thing is larger than this model.

The instructions also recommended coloured intakes for the jet engines but I just painted the exhausts with Alclad II dark aluminum for contrast. I made an error when assembling the engines as I glued the top and bottom halves together before gluing in the intakes and exhausts. This requires the intakes and exhaust tips to be forced in afterwards.

In conclusion a fun model to build. Minimal puttying needed. AS for the feasibility of the plane I am not so sure. Unless this plane can fly at 50,000 feet above any interceptors I do not see how this plane can defend itself. The thing is most likely not very maneuverable, there is 3 forward guns which are probably useless unless the enemy is flying right in front of you. There is no lower turret so this is most likely where the enemy would attack first. The rear turrets are remote controlled and it is hard enough to try and hit a moving target being right behind the guns but image trying to do it by remote control.