It’s pretty darned big.
Those are from right to left the Revell-Monogram 1/48 B-17G, the MPM 1/48 He.177 and the Revell/Koster 1/48 Do-217M-11. FedEx dropped off that He.177A-5 this morning and I could not wait to get into that box. A full kit review is here … http://www.swannysmodels.com/He177A5.html
Good “Greif” that is a big one. Can’t wait to see this one built up. Sorry I missed you in Toledo.
Jerry
Cheers for the inbox review Swanny… or should that be “Inbox for a minute or two while I went for my camera”? [;)]
Makes me want one even more now [
]
I cant belive they tried to use the grief as a dive-bomber[:O] must of been the desperate days of ww2. Also that is one crazy good paint job you did on the Do-217.
Actually, it was the days just after the invasion of Poland and the stunning success of dive-bombing. The fact they tried to copy that same formula of success in a larger aircraft actually hampered the program throughout the entire war. If they would have simply made it a high-altitude, four (individual) engined bomber, the Allies would have been in trouble.
1/48- Not really my scale, but still impressive, nonetheless. Can’t wait to see that monster built. Good luck with it! [;)][tup]
About the Dive Bombing…how in the world are you suppose to pull up during your dive in a 35 ton plane? Puzzels me
That was one of the problems that hampered the He-177 program. The RLM eventually admitted defeat and deleted the dive bombing requirement from the He-177, but the program was too far along to make the changes necessary to really make it a successful airplane. Heinkel produced the He-277, which used four conventional engines instead of the weird double engines on the 177. The RLM didn’t want to go through the retooling it would have taken to switch over.
The Germans made some very bad decisions which cost them dearly. If they hadn’t been so ideologically driven, they probably would have lost the war eventually, but it probably would have taken until 1947 to defeat them. (It was impossible to defeat the US in the 1940s, it had entirely too much industrial capacity, a large population, and a KISS philosophy about war production.)
Bill
Swanny, I’m just finishing the Revell 177 in 1/72, and that is plenty big enough.
Looking forward to seeing it in 1/48.
Karl
Thanks guys. This one is going to be a little while before I start work on it. I’m kind of waiting to see what the aftermarket industry kicks out first.
Where does it need the AM stuff then? I’d have thought that given the parts count in the cockpit, it’d be pretty good. I heard what you said about the bomb bay though… Wouldn’t be too hard to scratch one actually, having seen the CMK resin one for the 1/72nd Greif…
(Hides credit card in case one slips into basket)
I ordered one from my LHS yesterday and can’t wait to dig in, but there will be aftermarket goodies. This will be an investment!
There are a few areas where the aftermarket guys can do us some good with this one. The box art clearly shows the aircraft with three bomb racks but the kit does not include any racks at all. There are no missiles or bombs – should have three Henschel guided missiles and/or three Fritx X bombs or even a selection of bombs, depth charges and torpedos (yes - they were used with torpedos). Also the kit lacks a bomb bay. This may not be an issue for most modelers but I think it would be cool to build this with the bomb bay open. If there were a detail package availible for this I would buy another kit just so I could model one with a full exterior load and one on the ground with bay open being loaded internally. Lastly, while the kit does include a bunch of cockpit details all done in plastic I think many of these could be done better with PE or resin so there is some slight room for improvement there as well. I’m not complaining – I love the kit but ya gotta feed the AMS monster as well.
Thanks for the clarification Swanny… This subject interests me immensely, partly because of the wasted potential, and partly because I’d forgotten this plane ever existed until relatively recently. Funny thing was, when I was looking for the 1/72nd version, I stumbled across the Airfix kit, and the box pic was familiar, so I had seen one before… weird.
I also saw your thread on this over on Hyperscale, and that rude reply from some numpty really made my blood boil… I joined the forums specifically to reply to that [;)]
Thanks Mike, Derek is usually a pretty good guy, guess he just is not into oddball luftwaffe stuff today.
Probably got out of bed the wrong side [;)]
Me? Oddballier the better (probably not a real word) [:D]
Just came very close to buying one during my lunchtime surfing, but by the time I’d put the resin update for my TSR.2, Hawk cockpit & wheelbay set, and another piece of kit that I have since totally forgotten what it is [D)] the total was getting a bit LARGE, so I removed it from my cart []
Oh come on, all you are going to do is waste that money on something foolish like food or rent. If Oddballier is not a word then maybe we should submit it to Websters for consideration, right along with AMS.
LOL - substitute mortgage payments in there, and you’ll be right. Modelling and buying new & replacement bits for my mountain bike keeps me in a constant state of brokeness (another new word for Websters) [;)]