Wartime pictures of the Il-2 tended not to match the initial views angles, so I ignored the strange impression even the blurry pictures made: That changed when I found clear pictures at more appropriate angles: The canopy of the Tamiya kit looked disastrously too small: There was no doubt about it.
I knew the AM kit at least had always looked all right in the canopy size (though the AM nose had more serious problems than I anticipated), to the point of any comparison of it to photos of the Tamiya kit being quite shocking.
Then Brett Green announced that he was going to do a comparison article of the Accurate Miniatures kit to the new Tamiya kit, and I have to say I was puzzled: Just what was he going to say about this canopy debacle?
Prior to posting the article, he posted a question on his site as to possible canopy variantions on the Il-2: This is what the resident VVS expert Serguey (of Vector) answered (in substance): "The armoured glass windshield was never changed throughout the war"
Serguey did add however that there were many variations of the canopy framing fixtures, something which does not affect the canopy's overall proportions. Brett Green, however, seemingly seized on that for his article to make a rather strange claim.
This is how he handled the canopy issue between the two kits:
http://www.hyperscale.com/2012/features/il2amtamiyacomparison48bg_1.htm
Quote: "The windscreens of the Tamiya and Accurate Miniatures kits appear to be different. The rake of the Accurate Miniatures windscreen is slightly steeper while the armoured glass at the front of Tamiya’s is a bit wider. Once again, refer to Sergey’s photos to see one real example. Looking at wartime photos, it would appear that there were (at least) several variations in the style of windscreen, and the fairing below the windscreen. Sergey has pointed out that there were more than 90 serial modifications made to the Il-2 at various factories, so it is entirely likely that both Accurate Miniatures’ and Tamiya’s are correct, but different."
These are the pictures he used to illustrate the windshields:
Now that I actually have the Tamiya kit, any curiosity as to the way yours truly would go about it? Here goes:
Base width: AM: 18.8 mm Tamiya: 17 mm
Armored windscreen straight side height: AM: 8 mm
Tamiya: 6.8 mm
Armoured windscreen inside-frame width was slightly wider with AM than Tamiya, but not significant: 7.8 mm to 7.5 mm.
Some additional photos, all riddled with evil "lens distortions" of course...:
In profile, I found the assembled Tamiya kit does not overlay anywhere near as well as the Accurate Miniatures kit, whose errors are mostly confined only to the upper slope of the nose, but the AM also shares slightly the fin leading edge seen here:
This is not to say the AM kit is perfect: In fact the nose problems I know now are so serious that it makes Tamiya's idea of making obsolete the AM kit perfectly legitimate. The problem is that the Tamiya attempt was likely made only from inaccurate drawings that were assumed to be reliable: The better nose is of no help if the entire canopy and fuselage are now wrong... And in fact the AM kit is still by far the soundest basis, as the Tamiya kit is simply an unredeemable catastrophe: This is how far I got on the AM kit:
The nose profile required some vertical pinching at the front end, and some serious added tapering at the rear, plus a very small bit of overall nose backward tilting (in situ on the fuselage) which required some angling down of the exhausts to keep them level with the cockpit sills, and finally a bit of lenghtening by adding thick plasticard at the back end of the nose to keep top intake "deck" and its intake "body" in proportion, reshaping all that plasticard neatly into the radiuses of the wingroot leading edges: FUN!
Note the trimming of the intake lip back by 1.5 mm I previously said was actually more like 0.7 mm...
Getting the actual dimensions would not clarify as many things as you would think: The Tamiya cockpit sills are a lot wider than the canopy base on the kit, because there is a taper from the sills to the windscreen which absolutely does not exist in real life: This is why the Tamiya canopy looks so small and "lost" on top of the fuselage: Where should the measurement be taken?
The two kit armoured windscreens are close in width, and the difference in height is not the whole story: The entire Tamiya fuselage is too slim, and that shows up in the width of the nose which is way too sleek, as is the tail's depth too shallow. The nose is superficially better than the AM nose, but does not replicate the beefy proportions of the original, which also makes its rear bottom edge profile way too flat and horizontal towards the belly.
For all its flaws, the Accurate Miniatures kit displays a more than superficial soundness in outlines: Tamiya's errors are probably entirely due to a reliance on drawings.
There are much better models to build than either of them, in my opinion, and the sheer carelessness or sillyness on display here for a kit that had most of its research already done RIGHT on a PREVIOUS kit should be penalized by going to other, better treated subjects...
Not to mention the unpleasant feeling of the lame smokescreen laid down in its favour, while we're at it...
Gaston
P.S. And hey, $80 for a really great propeller and a good rear gunner MG is a bit steep too...: The spinner diameter does match fairly close to the AM kit spinner diameter, for the deeper pockets among us...
G.
