1:48 Pe-2

From a high-altitude fighter to a bomber

The Soviet twin-engine Pe-2 did not come about as a bomber. It grew out of a project for a high-altitude heavy fighter designed by a team led by an imprisoned engineer, and only a decision from above rebuilt it into a machine for dive attack. The pair of Klimov engines, the twin vertical tails and the glazed nose stayed as a legacy of the original specification. The number of examples built passed eleven thousand, so it was the most numerous Soviet bomber type of the war and at the same time a machine that can be built in dozens of color forms, from winter oversprays to summer camouflage.

A heavy coat makes a step

A mask does not only have to bar the paint's way; it has to leave a level surface behind it. Every coat has its thickness, and when five wet passes accumulate under the film, a step you can feel is left once it is uncovered. On the cockpit frames that looks like an unnaturally raised rail, on a national marking like a label stuck on. The answer is thinned coats and patience, because the covering power grows with the number of passes faster than the thickness of the film does. With white and with red, that is with exactly the colors of Soviet marking, it is most critical, and it pays to lay a light base under them, which speeds the covering up.

List of the delivery

• The glazed nose and the cockpit, both sides of the part
• A pair of insignia sets
• A decal sheet enclosed with the sheet of masks
• 1:48 scale