1:48 Fw - 190 D9

The long nose they called Dora

The radial engine gave the original fighter power near the ground, but at altitude it ran out of breath. The solution was an inverted V12, hidden under an annular radiator so neatly that at first glance it hardly differed from a radial. The fuselage grew half a meter at the front, and to keep the machine in balance the rear section ahead of the tail surfaces was lengthened too. That created a silhouette the pilots took with mistrust at first and praised after their first flights.

A guard over the runway

In the autumn of 1944 the new version reached the units in the west. Besides its ordinary tasks it was also given the thankless one of protecting jet machines at the moment they lowered the landing gear and descended to land, because it was precisely then that they were defenseless. Patrols with conspicuously striped lower wing surfaces therefore circled over the airfields, so that their own anti-aircraft defenses would not mistake them.

A dome with a minimum of frames

The cockpit is closed by a domed hinged section around which only a narrow rim runs, and at the front it is completed by an armored pane behind the windscreen. A straight strip of tape breaks on such a surface and paint gets under it on the bend. A die-cut film follows the outline of the rim exactly and the edge of the frame comes out sharp around the whole perimeter.

• the rim of the hinged dome
• the windscreen including the armored pane
• covering parts for the inner surface
• no plastic parts and no decals

The cut matches the clear components by Tamiya. On a casting from another brand the rim of the dome tends to be of a different width and the film would not cover it along its whole length.