Mysterious Metal 1/144th Fw 190D

 Courtesy of" Tims Second Hand Aircraft Emporium", I acquired this metal 1/144th scale FW190. 

I've no idea of the manufacturer, but I suspect it is True North. I don't have many metal planes in my collection, and those that I do have are all second hand. The world of 1/144th scale metal aircraft is outside my knowledge as I've never bought a new one. 

It is a nice clean casting though, with a few faint flash lines which came off easily enough. No panel lines either, hurrah! The extended nose identifies this as an Fw 190D, so only really in service from mid 1944. One of the finest propeller fighter aircraft to grace the WW2 aerial battlefield, and my favourite ride in both the A and D versions in European Air War and other combat flight sims. Much harder to crash on landing than a Bf 109! And packs a bigger punch. As Oddball might say "It is a beautiful aeroplane Moriarty" 

Although it is bit hard to see in the photos, this model is so old the silver pewter has tarnished to a sort of light bronze colour. The same tarnishing effect you get on the metal on those British bombers like the Blenheim which have metal rings on the front of the engine cowling. They started metallic silver end ended up metallic bronze with exposure to air and heat, so you can paint them any colour you like! 

There is a chip out the the rear of the port wing. Battle damage or something I guess.

Anyway, here it is painted up. I went down the rabbit hole of Fw 190D colour schemes, which is apparently a model makers favourite as there were so many variations. This is the scheme on a real aircraft taken from my 'Axis Aircraft of WW2' book, a fighter from JG4 in early 1945.

I did the cockpit dark blue with a light blue highlight, which looks OK on bubble canopies. I also spent the time to do the spinner corkscrew pattern, which was a bit of a pig but came out OK. Thank you Posca paint pens.

These planes were such a dogs dinner in appearance as many of the components came pre-painted (or unpainted!) from various subcontractors and were simply bolted together before being flung into the meatgrinder of 1944 air combat. After assembly a very minimal camo scheme was applied to the upper surfaces. The main colour scheme here is light green with sprayed dapple camo in dark green on the wings and elevators, and very light dapple on the upper surface of the fuselage. 

The front of the fuselage has a sky blue  underside, while the rear part of the fuselage is light grey, as is the entire tail assembly (with a very light bit of camo on the fin). This particular fighter wing used distinctive black and white stripes on the rear of the fuselage.

By this stage the Germans generally went for white outline crosses on dark surfaces and dark crosses on light surfaces. Strictly speaking the fuselage crosses should be dark grey, but I only had black ones in stock. These are a mixture of Zvezda and Doms Decals. Fortunately the DD tail swastikas are edged in white so stand out a bit better.

Although I didn't do underwing decals, I did do the under panels in a variety of colours. The leading edge is plain metal (apparently very common), the centre panels and forward fuselage are blue, the ailerons are light green and the rear fuselage is grey.

And here it is flying across the living room looking for bombers to shoot down.

I really enjoyed researching and painting that, and although it is only a wargaming piece of very limited utility, it felt more like a modelling project. It is also nice to bring this old warhorse to life, and in fact it has already seen action as a Jabo in one of the recent Normandy games I reported on.