Zvezda Ju 88

I've always had a soft spot for the Ju 88, what a fabulous plane and so versatile it served throughout the war in a wide range of roles. As I was getting some planes to paint anyway, I ordered one of the Zvezda Ju 88s to add to my collection. As it is a bomber, it is in the delightfully bonkers 1/200th scale, but at least it means it takes up less space in the box. 

Here is the finished thing. It is a fair bit bigger than 1/300th, but even so, it was a bit fiddly painting the canopy frame, but I did my best. It was a nice clean kit with very few parts, and went together without a hitch despite their attempts to make these things 'snap fit'. Unusually I didn't even have any problem with the tail place which went in cleanly although I managed to knock the tiny tail wheel off in the process.

It looks very business like in flight, some thing to do with the proportions of the engines I think. The top canopy had an odd arrangement where it clicked over the MGs (which were on a seperate assembly), but I managed it without breaking anything despite my big fat fingers.

A somewhat blurry shot while it pretends it is flying over London in the Battle of Britain. There was very little flash on it, and the joins on the fuselage were easily smoothed down as they'd be very obvious in the highly matt paint finish.

It comes with four pleasing big bombs to sling under the wings, thye look rather menacing from the front. I modelled it wheels up and minus the the prop blades as I like my planes to be 'flying'. The blades came off OK but and the big spinners made it easy to clean up any resulting irregularities.

 Unusually this model only came with a wheels down option, Zvezda normally provide both, so I just left the undercart off. There are a couple of holes left which I suppose I should fill but I couldn't be bothered.

I painted it in standard green/dark green splinter with a sky blue underside as it is a nice scheme and good for the whole war. Humbrol Army Green 5102 for the base colour and VJ German Camo Green for the splinter pattern. The yellow spinners tone well with the overall green scheme and emphasise their aggressive look. 

Markings are as supplied, although the black fuselage numbers don't show up well against the green background. Zvezda don't supply swastika tail markings so I drew them on freehand with a Micron lining pen. Again, they are completely invisible in this photo.

So, overall a very nice little model and lots of fun to assemble and paint. It is just possible I might have a game in mind where this will see some use. Watch this space.