An add on FSM site http://www.finescale.com/en/The%20Magazine.aspx describes FW-189 A1 as night fighter.
However, according to Wikipedia, it was a reconnaissance plane http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FW189 and the A1 was a tropical version.
What gives?[*-)]
Cheers…
A number of FW-189’s where modified to nightfighters to combat night raiders like the Po-2 in Russia. The tropical variant was the A1 Trop, the nightfighter variant did not have a special designation (altough it migth have an R for Rüstsatz designation)
some more info:
http://www.aeroscale.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=Reviews&file=index&req=showcontent&id=6401
No…
The Great Wall kit comes in both the recon and night fighter version. I don’t think there were many night fighter versions, but the Germans needed something to deal with the extremely slow biplanes that were conducting night time harassment raids on the Eastern Front.
After the Allies invaded Sicily, the Germans did the same thing to the Allies sending over Stukas on night missions. I read a book by an RAF night fighter pilot based in the Med. He said they had to drop the landing gear and flaps to match speed with the Stukas.
Bill
Tropical versions of anything were not limited to deployment in North Africa. A tropical version typically was to deal with very dusty environments and they were also present in southern Russia.
The Germans would use the Fiesler Storch (I’m not going to look through my piles of junk to find the correct spelling) as a night fighter if they could. They pretty much used everything else except maybe Panthers and Tigers which were a tad heavy to get off the ground.