Dornier Do-335B-9

Dornier Do-335B-9

Revell-Monogram ProModeler, 1/48

The year is 1946, and the war is still raging over Europe. Several intelligence failures, as well as failed operations, have caused the war in Europe to drag on. The resultant delay has allowed Hitler to regroup and rearm, and one of the consequences of this delay is the fielding of several new aircraft, many of which would not have seen the light of day had it not been for the failure of the Allies to capture Berlin. However, Hitler's fortunes have started to take another turn: while there is plenty of troops, ammunition and equipment, key battles have been lost, and as a result, most of Europe has fallen to the Allies, and now all German units have returned to the Fatherland to defend the Reich from the Allied invasion.

Drawing upon the success of the Do 335 fighter, the RLM requested a proposal for a new, faster night fighter to eventually replace the Ju-88 series of night fighters. A two-seater variant is drawn up, with several variants, designated B-5, B-6, B-7 and B-8, but all were rejected save for a final design, the B-9. Although slightly slower, the B-9 was still faster or comparable to the Ju-88 and other night fighters, at 440 mph, and still maintained the maneuverability of the A-1 variant. In order to save on production time, the trainers were converted to B-9 standard instead of having to retool for the different canopy and cockpit configurations of the B-5, B-6, B-7 and B-8. The final addition to give the B-9 its distinct look is the installation of Schrage Musik, or the infamous oblique-firing cannons mounted on the spine behind the second cockpit. The idea for the Do-335B-9 came when I was looking to build an entry for the What-If contest.

While I was originally planning to build a Malaysian Tornado, the modifications I wanted to do required more surgery than I thought, and with exams just around the corner, I decided that doing a quick modification, along with a speculative paint job, would be easier. I was looking for an opportunity to try something new, and so I pulled out the old ProModeler Do-335 kit in 1/48, hoping to learn how to work with brass photo etch parts. Building the kit was an exercise in frustration. It's not really that hard to build - however, the instructions for the kit were poorly done and were actually sequenced wrongly, causing me to almost break the model at one point, and also resulted in the attachment of wrong parts. The article will detail the list of mistakes in the manual, as well as the modifications to the kit. Most kits start with cockpit assembly, but this kit moves it to Step 2. This is because the kit was designed to be either a single-seat A-1, or a two-seater night fighter. However, talking to Steven Eisenman (Modeldad) revealed to me that the night fighter depicted in the kit is wrong, and is actually the trainer variant. The night fighter also had a domed cockpit, but I was determined not to do much modifications to the kit, and decided, as Modeldad suggested, to have some fun with it. So I did. Anyway Step 1 has you gluing the fuselage together, a pretty straightforward step. You might want to decide at this point whether or not you want to build this as a single- or double-seater - obviously the double-seater involves more work. Now, on to the errors I mentioned: 1) The cockpit instructions (Step 2) are wrong. The instructions tell you to glue rear bulkhead #46 to the cockpit tub #36. Instead, use rear bulkhead #34 instead, and use #46 for the rear cockpit.

This is because there are locating tabs at the bottom of the bulkhead which aligns it to the nose wheel well, and not using the correct part will also mean that you won't be able to fit the cockpit in. Also: the PE throttles won't fit into the slots of the PE engine control panel. Save yourself some time -just snip the individual throttles, and glue them down to the panel. 2) The tail assembly instructions (Step 5) are wrong too. Stick the port horizontal stabilizer (#13 and #18) on the starboard side, and vice versa. 3) The final problem is in Step 9, which is the Propeller & Engine Assembly. Swap the rear propeller plate (#33) for the front propeller plate (#32). This is because the prop shaft is way too short on the front, and you won't be able to secure the prop down. You'll notice the correct way to do it on the picture on the side of the box! Anyway, if you have any of those spare Hasegawa or Tamiya vinyl caps lying about, use them to cap the prop shafts after the props are put in. Without those the props would just fall off the shaft unless they're glued on. If you sand the shafts down a little and polish them finely enough you could make the props spin freely provided the vinyl cap was spaced properly. Speaking of which, sand the front prop hub flush so that the vinyl cap would have some space to hold properly. The final problem is actually more of a combination of poor engineering and also of poor planning. In order to get the little boarding ladder well (PE part #1) for the ladder to fit, the instructions suggest you cut away a section of the port wing root to accommodate the part. However, they don't say anything about it until the wing's all glued it! Granted, you should always look at the entire instruction booklet before starting, but one can forget (like me). It doesn't help that the resulting hole was too shallow to accommodate the boarding ladder well!!! I ended up taking the Dremel and sanding down the ladder well to fit it in. If the instructions had asked you to cut the hole out before the wings were glued in, it would have saved you two hour's worth of work (a lot of time will be wasted trying to get the boarding ladder well to fit). One little thing you would want to watch out for is the fit of the wing roots.

Do as the instructions suggest and use tape to maintain the dihedral until the glue dries, but use a plastic welder such as Tenex or ProWeld instead. Even after than you might still want to use a little filler to make sure it looks right. Oh, and while you're sanding that down, the spine might try to pop out, so be careful on that (mine popped out, and I haven't been able to cover up the crack since). The boarding ladder and the brace itself is really fragile, and can be a little tricky to glue down. Leave that till last (or better yet, right before you mount the propellers). And don't touch it once it's on. The landing gear fit really well, and was very secure. You wouldn't have much of a problem with that. The main wheels, however, do not have a positive lock so you'll want to use a bit if quick-drying CA glue to make sure they stay. The paint scheme was based on that of the He-219 NJG1, in Sylt-Westerland, in Germany of May, 1945. Somehow the 335 looked odd in just RLM 76 with RLM 75 mottles on it, even plain, so I decided to paint the undersides black. I used the instructions from the Tamiya kit as a reference.

The prop blades were painted RLM 66 while the spinner and the spinner plates were RLM 75, all from Testor's Model Master Acryl line, thinned between 20% to 50% depending on how light or thin I wanted to layers of paint to be. The exhaust shrouds were painted in Testor's Metalizer Burned Iron. After an initial gloss coat the kit was ready for decals. The decals used were the ones supplied with the kit, which were glossy and a little thick, but reacted very well to Solvaset. After the decals were over-sprayed with a dull coat you'd swear the markings were painted on. I used the swastika from an MPM kit as the kit did not have one. So what makes my kit a What-If? Well, for one thing, the kit only has one set of antennas on each side. The paint scheme is partially speculative Schrage Musik was never mounted on the 335 either, as far as I know. I recall that the Ju-88s and He-219s had problems of the spines slowly developing cracks or problems due to the vibrations from the firing of the cannon. Well, I "solved" it. Wrapped around each barrel is a canvas sleeve, which not only protects the gun's receiver (hidden beneath the spine) from the elements, but is filled with bits of rubber recycled from disused tires to be used as vibration dampers. The mounting surfaces and any contact points with the gun to the fuselage are also encased in rubber to dampen the vibrations from the gun to the fuselage. I didn't have a decent place to photograph the kit (unless you'd call my workspace decent....) so I took it out into the parking lot. I originally wanted to get some railroad grass and put mud on it, as I wanted the airplane to be on a muddy airfield in the summer of '46 (notice how much mud and dirt's on the plane), but I didn't have access to any and Mark was hoping that I could have it in for Friday. So I ended up this little scenario that it's the same muddy airfield, but in late October of '46, and there was a sudden light snowfall while the plane was out, and the pictures taken were of "after action" shots after the plane returned from a successful mission. In order to get the simulated snow, I snuck out to the parking lot, and while nobody was looking, sprayed tons of "Santa Snow" artificial snow that is usually used for tree and wreath decorations - it's fine enough that it looks pretty decent to scale.

I didn't spray too much as I wanted to project the image of light snow - hence the brown spots around the picture (that's actually the sidewalk!) I also mixed up some brown sludge out of soapy water and brown paint to simulate mud and sloshed it on top of the "snow." The pictures were taken with an old secondhand Fujifilm MX-500 digital camera at 1.3 megapixels, set at 640x480 on fine quality, with macro set on for close-ups - proving that you don't really need the latest $1000 digital camera to take good pictures of your models. I also doctored up the first and last photos in this page with Adobe Photoshop to add some grain, and convert it to black and white to make them look like old WW2 photographs - not bad for a first try huh? I have to say that although the problems with the instructions did give me fits, once I got past those little hurdles, I had quite a bit of fun with this model - especially since I didn't have to be particularly accurate or particular about the kit's faults (for example, those antenna). If you want to build a Pfeil or an Anteater in 1/48, but don't want to shell out the dinero for a Tamiya, don't mind the raised panel lines and also wouldn't mind a little extra detailing work (if you want to be really accurate), the this kit is the way to go. Me, I'll go AMS on my Tamiya kit, but with the Pro-Modeler I learned to use PE parts and got to apply my scratchbuilding, problem solving and creative skills. Hey, it's a What-If!

Page created January 17, 2003