Finally, I have finished yet another long term build, 1/48 Pro Modeler's JU-88A-4. Ready to continue harrying the RN and USN in the Mediterranean.

Primed with Floquil silver, painted with Polly Scale RLM 78, 79 & 80, etc. Amazing how hard Polly Scale dries and resists tape. Built OoB, except for brake piping, and seat belts made of cloth tape and chain link.

I decided to build the machine lightly weathered. Seems the attrition of the bomber Geschwaders was so high I figured not many planes would live to get banged up and chipped. First I painted it in the three color camo. Then I decaled it. What I've read indicates the over-water squiggly Wassermuster camo was field-applied, so I allowed it to obscure some markings.

The JU-88's exhaust pattern is very interesting. At first I thought it was shadow, but photos without shadow show the heavy soot blasted out of the pipes and was carried up the nacelle and over the leading edge, as well as under the wing.

The kit decals were troublesome, taking three sheets to complete the bird. The gear, too. Multi-part, one strut broke and had to be grafted to the bulkhead inside the wheel well AFTER the wing was assembled. Finally, the canopy, after much sanding and tweaking, still doesn't fit well. As I've posted before, looking at many JU-88 photos shows the real canopy didn't fit like a filled-N-sanded model, either, so I decided "good enough" is the motto, and it was time to finish the beast.

Overall, a nice model, but be ready to work for it as it is a modular kit.
















ABOVE, Just over the small seat, you can see the 'bathtub' gunner's twin MGs.










Note, the red in lower left nose isn't the bombadier after a fighter attack, it is the red on the cup in front of the plane.

I hope this is up for model of the month,if it is then it gets my vote :-) superb ju-88 dont see many of them but yours is a treat

Nice junker, its a night bomber right?

Not bad work at all. I've tried to do the squiggly line camo a few times and it just never comes out right for me.
The one critique I would have is the silver chipping on the props. IIRC, these wide pitch props were made of wood not metal (someone please correct me if I'm wrong, please).


Mark

Thanks for the heads-up, Mark. I have placed a call to Twelve O'Clock High

As per the above URL post, though the props should be wood, the metal leading edge means my chipping is probably not incorrect.

Thanks for bringing this to my--and others'--attention!

Ah, metal leading edges you say? Well, that clears that up! :-)
Nice work.

Mark

I could be completely off the mark here so sorry in advance. LOL To me the squigly camo looks likes it needed to be thinned a bit more. Maybe it's just through my dodgy airbrush techniques but alot of my soft edged camo schemes turned out exactly like this and weren't soft edged at all. This was until I thinned it out alot more and found the result was alot more convincing. As I say I'm no expert here and you've definatelly got a model I'd proudly display on my shelf.

The "squiggly" camouflage looks rough around the edges. By thinning the paint to the consistency of skim milk and using lower pressure (about 12 psig works for me) you can get very sharp lines. It takes some practice to not get runs because the paint is so thin but like everything else in modeling, practice makes perfect!

Apart from that it's a fine looking model!

Hi Matt & Scott,

You are both correct. The squiggy is my disappointment on this kit. I've done better but this time, using Tamiya, the results were not consistant. I find Tamiya is not suitable for good soft-edge results, whereas with Polly Scale I can achieve freehand tight patterns.

IMHO, Tamiya acrylic paint is overrated.

I agree with you there Fred as I've has the same problems particularly with the lighter tamiya colours. I'm not sure why but for me it's a very hit or miss afair to get the paint thinned just right. I'm a bit of a vallejo convert now.

I don't use acrylics unless there is nothing else available. I prefer the good ol' stinky solvent based enamels. You can thin them way down to get a very sharp edge

Fred,
I really like the clean lines on the clear canopy areas...very sharp and neat--what technique did you use? I know the canopy on those Ju-88 are a lil weird Nice work.

Sean

Sean,

Thank you for your comments.

Try as I might, I couldn't mask this canopy to my satisfaction. So I brush-painted it. Then I took toothpicks and clear sprue and removed the overbrushing.

The problem with masking this canopy is two-fold. The framing is rounded so it was hard for me to follow it with tape, and the canopy is three pieces: front and two rear pieces joined down the center frame--VERY difficult to glue and keep glued.

Love it!!

Hi Fred:

Very nice model. I don´t know much about this particular camo but it looks great in the overall finished model. How big is the bird ?
The only thing that I have to say is that the paint of some edges of the frames in the canopies invade the clear part of the windows. I guess that masking that canopies was a nightmare ! Parafilm M is a great stuff, specially for this complecated masking work. Did you use it ?

Welldone.
Carlos