1:48 Petlakov Pe-2

A fast bomber from a fighter design

The Pe-2 was not born as a bomber. It came about by reworking a twin-engine high-altitude fighter that the design bureau was still working on in a prison design bureau, and only an order from above turned it into a machine for dive attack. From the original project it kept a slim fuselage and performance with which it could break away from most contemporary fighters, and dive brakes were added under the wing. Soviet aviation built it in greater numbers than any of its other twin-engine types and the crews gave it a homely name derived from the abbreviation of its designation. It flew from the first days of the war to its end, later mainly as a conventional level bomber.

The glazing and its masking

On this type the cockpit has a complicated division: a long glazed spine above the pilot, the glazed nose of the navigator and a separate window for the gunner at the rear. Taping such a shape by hand takes more time than the whole rest of the spraying, whereas cut film fits the first time and the frames come out equally wide along their whole length.

The parts are applied to both sides of the glazing so that the frame does not look translucent when seen from inside. The film can be seated with tweezers even into the narrow places between individual panes and it holds on a slightly domed surface too. After spraying it is taken off with a pull at a slant from the edge, not straight up. Soviet machines were also often sprayed in two shades of green with a sharp boundary, so any film left over comes in useful outside the cockpit as well.

• The target is the 1:48 MPM
• The nose, the spine and the rear gun position
• Both sides of the glazing
• Without cutting tape by hand
• It seats even between narrow panes