1/48 Eduard Fw 190D-9, Black 4, II./JG 301 (Complete)

Modeling Subjects Aircraft
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It’s back to the Luftwaffe with Eduard’s new D-9 Weekend Edition.

I was looking for an interesting late war subject and found W.Nr. 500576 in EagleCals #124 and in Jerry Crandall’s Dora book.

This plane was captured at Wunsdorf airfield as the Allies advanced in the last weeks of the war. There are a few B&W photos of this dora. Black 4’s W.Nr. is close to 500570 (Blue 12), of which there are several excellent photos, including one in color.

My planned camo scheme for Black 4 consists of RLM 81, RLM 82 and the blue-green version of RLM 76 on the fuselage, natural metal, RLM 81 and blue-green on the underside, and RLM 76 and RLM 81 on the upper wing surfaces.

The new Eduard Weekend Edition kit is a reboxing of the earlier version with new markings. As those who’ve built this kit know, it is a battle at every step with fit issues, especially if you want closed covers, but can be made into a decent looking Dora with patience. My kit had a severely warped right fuselage half that I salvaged by heating it up in hot water and carefully bending it back in shape.

It’s mostly OOB with the addition of Eduard seat belts, brass tubes for the 20mm cannons, some scratch built items (throttle) and a few PE parts from the spares box (canopy hand crank, cannon door hinges, wing reinforcements and supercharger exhaust shield). I’ll use Mr. Color paints, Eagle cals and Montex masks for the main markings.

Here’s the front office.

If you’re planning to build this kit, I recommend an aftermarket instrument panel detail set or decals. I couldn’t get the kit decals to conform well to the surface features.

Here are some shots of the PE extras.

The main build is complete and my Dora is ready for priming and painting.

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The priming and main painting is now complete. I really got a kick out of this wild, late war camo scheme. The relentless pressure and disruption on aircraft production coincident with a paint scheme change-over (RLM 74/75 to RLM 81/82) resulted in some interesting and unique color schemes across the various factories assembling Doras. Black 4 was produced at the Mimetall factory, with subassemblies – wings, engine, tail, etc. – coming from various distributed suppliers.

Mr Finishing Surfacer 1500 was applied as primer, followed by the red and yellow JG 301 bands. Gloss black was applied before the natural metal Mr Color Super fine silver.

After the metal section was dry and masked, RLM 76 was applied to the ailerons, the top surfaces of the wings and stabilizers, and the rudder. The paint was applied unevenly with the addition of highlights and shading.

After masking, RLM 81 was next. Apparently there were three versions of RLM 81, with varying degrees of green and brown. My Mr. Color mix was 5 parts RLM 81 and 2 parts Red Brown. RLM 81 was applied to the wing and stabilizer upper surfaces as well as the front portion of the underside of the wings and the landing gear doors.

After masking the wings and stabilizers, the fuselage and tail were painted a lightened version of Mr. Color Duck Egg Green to represent the blue-green version of RLM 76. RLM 81 was then applied along the spine from nose to tail. The engine cowling and sections of the spine near the tail were sprayed with RLM 82 bright green. RLM 81 and 82 mottling was then applied to the tail.

The profile indicated some rust colored primer/putty near the tail and around panels underneath.

After some general clean up and then chipping and scratching in wear areas, GX100 gloss was applied and now Black 4 is ready for decals. I had some previously used Montex masks but they weren’t in good enough shape to re-use unfortunately. The Eagle Cal decals look good. Thanks for looking.

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Wow! That looks awesome. Beautiful job.

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Coming along nicely Hoss

I just used Eagle Cal decals on a 1/72 Dora and they were some of the best decals I have worked with.

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Wow! That looks great! Great work.[<:o)]

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Thanks Chemteacher!

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Thanks JB. The decals are going on great so far.

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Thanks Flight Line! Making slow progress.

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Looking sharp! I really like the lines of the Dora.

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Dunno how I missed this but I’ve gotta say…this is one helluva build. D-9’s are my all time favorite aircraft. Just a beautiful bird.

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I like the look of these late model 190s. Incorporating bare aluminum panels really makes these things pop!

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Thanks John! Me too.

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Thanks Mustang. I’ve been learning a lot about Doras for this build. I’ve built a couple before but didn’t realize the extent of the variations of camo schemes. And the Dora’s lines are certainly iconic.

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Thanks Chad!

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The markings are now complete and I figured I’d share a couple of photos. The decals went down without any major issues.

More weathering is next. Thanks for looking.

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very interesting camo. most impressive.

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Great work so far Hoss!! [Y][Y][Y][Y]

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Thanks Nick.

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Thanks Mustang!

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My rendition of Fw 190D-9 Black 4 from II./JG 301 is now complete.

The research project was as involved as the build itself. I used a number of references including Jerry Crandall’s Dora books, Smith & Creek’s Focke Wulf books and various articles and references on the web to try to make sense of the plane details, history, color schemes, markings, etc.

Black 4 (W.Nr. 500576) was found at Wunsdorf airfield when the British 6th Airborne Division captured the Luftwaffe airbase on 8 April 1945. The pilot is unknown. The aircraft was manufactured at the Mimetall factory near Erfurt and apparently sports camoflage typical of aircraft from this factory. I found a number of different interpretations of the exact colors and patterns but from what I was able to piece together, the basic scheme is as follows:

  • Underside: RLM 81 on the forward part of the wings, natural metal aft of the landing gear bays, RLM 76 ailerons.
  • Fuselage: RLM 76 blue green, RLM 81 on the spine from the nose to tail with areas of RLM 82 applied. Mottles on the tail.
  • Upper wings: RLM 81 and 76 camo pattern.

I used the profile from Jerry Crandall’s book, the Eagle Cals #124 profile and other references to create my hybrid camo pattern. I mostly followed the profile in Jerry Crandall’s book. There are a few photos of Black 4 in pieces, without a complete view of the assembled aircraft. Detailed analyses of the well-documented Blue 12 from JG 6, which has a Wk. Nr. only 6 units before my subject, was also helpful.

As for the build, I added the following goodies:

  • Brass tubing for the 20mm cannons and pitot tube.
  • Hollowed out ends of the exhaust tips and MGs
  • Spare PE and parts for the lower antennas, landing gear indicators, hinges for cannon bay doors, exhaust deflector, wing support plates
  • Stretched sprue for the main antenna cable.
  • Eduard seat belts.
  • Eagle Cals #124 - worked very well.
  • Landing gear struts from the spares box - the kit parts were molded horribly.
  • Scratch built the ETC rack braces and added some panel line detail
  • Wheels from the spares box - the kit wheels looked a little narrow.

This is the third 1/48 Eduard Dora I’ve built and it was not any easier than the first two. This is a kit that fights you at every step. It’s designed to be completed with open covers for the MGs and cannons – closing the covers is not straightforward. Every part seems to be a project in itself, unlike the Tamiya kits that fall together. That being said, I think the end result with the added goodies is a reasonable representation.

For main camo, I used Mr. Color paints exclusively. RLM 76 and RLM 82 were from the bottle. My ultimate version of RLM 81 Brown-violet was 5 parts Mr. Color RLM 81 and 2 parts Red Brown. The fuselage RLM 76 blue green was Mr. Color Duck Egg Green mixed 1:1 with Flat white. Of course extensive fading and shading was done for all colors. I primed with Mr. Surfacer 1500.

The spinner was painted on – I tried several decals from different sheets but was unsuccessful.

Decals were great - no issues with the Eagle Cals (except for the spinner, which was most likely operator error).

Mr. Color GX100 was used for the gloss coat – great stuff.

Flory washes of various colors were used for the panel lines and rivets – Dark Dirt for RLM 82, Black/Dark Dirt for RLM 81 and gray for RLM 76.

For the camo masking, I used paper cut out pattern with small tape rolls for the wings and white-tack rolls for the fuselage. Mottling was all free hand.

Chips and scratches were applied with a combination of paint and colored pencil. A thin, black-brown mix was applied to most of the panel lines, especially near the engine and control surfaces. The exhaust pattern was slowly built up with brown and black, carefully following reference photos.

The cannons and MGs were painted with Mr. Color Dark Iron and buffed.

The final flat coat was Model Master Flat Clear Lacquer.

All-in-all, the centerpiece of this project is the unique and interesting camo and marking scheme. Plowing through Edward’s kit to get to the painting phase was a little tedious but I’m happy with the final result. Thanks for following along!