The Messerschmitt Me
264 was one of a number of German projects during WWII to create a long-range
bomber with the capability of bombing the United States. It was unique in
that it was one of the few proposals that resulted in a flyable prototype, and
the only one which was a completely new design (the other being the Ju 390,
which was an extension of an existing airplane). What makes this feat even
more amazing is that it did so in climate where nearly everything was working
against it. Official Luftwaffe doctrine placed a low importance on the
long-range bomber as a whole early in the War, and toward the end the need for
defensive fighters made the offensive bomber seem like a bad idea (even to the
Nazis). Even among long-range bomber projects the Messerschmitt design had
few supporters- early on the preferred choice was the Ta 400 (a development of
the Fw 300, which itself was a development of the Fw 200) due to the latter's
better performance figures. Keep in mind that the Ta 400 was nothing but a
paper project at this point. When it became clear the Ta 400 was never
going to be built in time, focus shifted to the other extreme. In the
desire to get a flyable bomber as soon as possible, emphasis was placed on a Ju
390- by all accounts a solid (but not that stellar) development of the proven Ju
290. The only reason the Me 264 got as far as it did was that its
development had a head start on nearly every other project, work beginning in
1937.
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The Me 264 V1 first took to
the air in 1942. It became immediately clear that, while it was a
very advanced aircraft for the time, it was never going to fulfill the
requirement of flying the 7500 miles needed for a trip to the United
States and back. It was plagued with numerous gremlins and technical
problems, some minor but some quite severe. Flight testing continued
until 1944, pausing for a few months in late 1943 when the original Jumo
211 in-line engines were replaced with BMW 801 radials. In July 1944
the V1, along with the nearly completed V2 and parts for the V3, was
destroyed in an Allied bombing raid. Despite this work on the basic
264 designed continued until nearly the end of the War, most of it
concerned with various engine arrangements.
The Me 264 has been one of my
favorite aircraft, and when it comes to 1/72 the Special Hobby kit is your only
option. It's also one of modeling's great fallacies. You see, the
kit doesn't represent any real aircraft. It features Jumo engines (which
the V1 had), and a pair of long, tapered wings. Longer, in fact than the
V1 ever had. Now, there were plans to add extended wingtips to the V2
version onward. Only problem? They were all to be fitted with BMW
radials. Because I wanted to build an accurate V1, the wingtips needed to
be chopped off. New wingtips were shaped from laminated styrene.
The only other major item of note
is the engines. I don't really like the engines supplied with the kit.
Despite having quite beautiful resin radiator fronts, the rest of them look....
not so beautiful. One of the most prominent parts of the Jumo nacelle, the
cowl flaps, aren't even scribed into the kit parts. Given the high quality
of the rest of the kits, unless something is done about it, they just bring the
look of the kit down. Besides, I like the look of the BMWs better anyway,
and I had a few lying around from a failed Revell Germany Ju 290 model.
The actual build was rather
uneventful. Major points of interest:
- It's VERY easy for this
model to be a tail sitter. I packed the entire fuselage in front of the
main landing gear with weight, and filled up both inner nacelles, and still
ended up with a plane that's nearly a tail-sitter.
- The first time I painted
it, I had half the paint lift off with the masking tape. This required an
extra few days of stripping and re-painting, and the final result isn't as
perfect as I'd like it to be.
- The Revell Germany BMW
radial cowls lack the exposed exhaust pipes that were on the real thing. I
added them myself using stretched sprue. All 56 of them.
- I took great care in
gluing, masking, and sanding the two-piece front canopy, and it turned out
almost perfectly. It wasn't until the build was 99.99% finished that I
realized I had the front nose cap on crooked. Thankfully, the process of
removing, re-gluing,and re-blending it into the model wasn't as horrible as it
could have been.
- Weathering was done using
pencil graphite. It's subtle, more durable than pastels, and (in my
opinion) works wonderfully.
I'm really happy with how this
build turned out. Lately it seems I've been bitten by the "Amerika
Bomber" bug, and in fact have two Ju 290 kits in transit right now.
Two guesses what THOSE are going to be used for (and the first guess doesn't
count).
Mike
Glinski
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