1:48 Do-17Z

The flying pencil over the Channel

The slim fuselage of circular section earned the type a nickname taken from a writing implement. The Z version had little left in common with the original elegant idea, though: the nose received a fully glazed cockpit with a gondola beneath it, into which the whole four-man crew was packed so that they could cover and back one another up. The bomb load was small and the speed average, so during the fighting over England in 1940 these machines were among the most vulnerable. That is exactly why they learned to fly low over the ground as no other bomber of that class could. By going down to the ground the crews bought time, because the defenders found them considerably harder to pick out against fields and woods than against the sky.

Box contents

The set holds one covering of the glazing, from the outer face, to which three outlines for the national insignia are added. The cut is figured for the moldings of Hobbycraft.

Deal with the inside of the frames in advance

With a set that covers only the outer face, the order of work is reversed. There will be nothing to mask with from the inside, so the frames have to be painted before the fuselage is glued together, with a brush along the edge or over a strip of masking tape cut to the width of the frame. It pays to start with the interior color and only lay the cockpit shade under it; any overlap disappears in the gloom behind the glass. Only then glue the part in and fit the outer film. Anyone who leaves this step for later usually ends up laboriously picking the frames out with a scalpel through finished glass, and one scratch from a blade is visible from a meter away on a glazed nose.