1:48 IL-4

A long-range bomber that reached Berlin

The Ilyushin Il-4 grew out of the prewar DB-3 type and became the main long-range bomber of the Soviet Air Force. In August 1941 crews of the naval aviation carried out a raid on Berlin with it, an operation at the very limit of its range at the time. The machine was built in enormous numbers and was also used to drop torpedoes over the Baltic and the Black Sea.

A glazed nose instead of a cockpit

This aircraft does not have one window but several separate spaces. Right at the front the navigator and bombardier sit in a nose of faceted glazing made up of flat panes, above them the pilot is under a fairly narrow canopy offset to the left of the axis, and at the rear on the spine sits a gunner in a turret. Each of those spaces has a different depth and a different amount of equipment.

Three different views inside

The faceted nose is the most demanding, because its panes meet at sharp angles and the frame between them is visible from both sides at once, wherever you look at the model from. When the reverse is left without paint, the plastic showing through breaks the impression of an enclosed space and the navigator's station turns into a glass shell. Masks for the reverse side deal with that problem at source.

With bombers in general the glazing is the one place where the viewer can tell how honestly the model was built. The fuselage is mostly smooth and single-colored, the engines covered by cowlings, and so the eye slips exactly to where there is a window. Giving time to the reverse of the frames therefore pays off more than on fighters, where busy camouflage and stores under the wings draw the attention away.

Box contents

Both surfaces of the glazing, a pair of insignia and a decal sheet. The bomber itself and the paints are not in the package.