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Fw 190 A8/R8

About the airplane shown: Fw 190 A-8/R2 white 11

This machine was flown by Gefreiten Walter Wagner of 5./JG 4. On January 1st 1945, during "Operation Bodenplatte", he had to land his machine on a field close to St.Trond, near the base of the 404th Fighter Group of the USAAF. The aircraft was slightly damaged.

The Americans saved the machine, examined it in detail and tried to make it ready to fly again. The wings were repaired and the damaged engine cowling was replaced by another, probably yellow. However, the machine never flew again because hydraulic fluid damaged the tyres.

The commander of the 404th Fighter Group, Col. Leo C. Moon later asked the machine to be painted all red, probably as some sort of homage to the red baron and provided it with a fictitious identification code as well as the date 1-1-45 on the vertical stabilizer.

About the model.

The model is the well-known Fw 190 F-8 from Tamiya which I modified to A-8/R2 specifications. There is nothing special to say about the build since the kit is very straightforward. I Know the A-8/R2 variant is also available from Tamiya but I had 2 kits of the F-8 already in my stash and wanted to use one for this project.

The armour-plates can be purchased separately by Eduard as „Rammjäger Plates“. The Decals (bar crosses and maintenance stencils) are from the Spare Box. The fuselage bands and the numbers were sprayed on the model using masks and the unit emblem was assembled from 6 separate decals and refined with the brush.

The base plate under the model is a reference made by Marc Toillié from France. He manufactures and sells various kinds of baseplates in all scales.
info mark58
As reference I used a profile made by french artist Thierry Dekker. His work can be found here:
dekkerartwork.over-blog.com