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REVELL 1:72
JUNKERS JU 290A-5 SEEADLER
'INBOX Review'
Reviewer:
Kevin Ronayne (kevin.ronayne@nuigalway.ie)
Please also see Johan De Wolf's Inbox review, where
an addendum on kit's accuracy has been included
Date: 1st March 2004
The Ju 290 originated in the Junkers Ju 89, which was designed in the mid-1930's for the so-called 'Ural Bomber' programme. When the programme was cancelled in late 1936, the Ju 89 development programme also came to a halt. However, Junkers got permission to develop a new long-range transport aircraft using the Ju 89 wings, tail and powerplant together with a new fuselage. This was to be the Junkers Ju 90, eight of which were sold to Deutsche Lufthansa, who started using the aircraft in late 1938.
Changes to the basic design of the Ju 90 continued for sometime through a series of prototypes, with the wing design being significantly altered. Eventually, the aircraft became the Ju 290, by which time it was powered by BMW 801 radial engines, had a defensive armament and featured a rear-loading hydraulically operated ramp, called a Trapoklappe. The first production aircraft were delivered in late 1942, and were almost immediately rushed into service to help the trapped 6th Army in Stalingrad. One Ju 290 was lost during this campaign. After Stalingrad, the Ju 290's moved to the Mediterranean theatre. Two more aircraft were lost, as the Luftwaffe transport force was savaged in the closing stages of the North African campaign.
During this time, the Ju 290 was also being developed for the long-range maritime reconnaissance role. The Ju 290 was developed through a series of sub-versions, culminating in the A-5 variant, which included armour protection for both crew and fuel tanks. Defensive armament was also increased, with two low-drag dorsal turrets and MG 151/20 cannons in the waist positions. 11 A-5's were produced, making it the most numerous variant of the Ju 290.
With the loss of French bases after the Normandy landings, the Ju 290's were withdrawn to Germany. Some aircraft had already been withdrawn some time before and used for special very long-range transport missions. These included flights to Manchuria to exchange strategically important materials with the Japanese, whilst somehow managing to evade the attention of the Soviets. Once withdrawn from France, the other Ju 290's were now also used as transports, with the rear ramp having been retained even in the maritime versions.
The A-7 variant was a missile carrier, and could have carried a number of different missiles or guided bombs. It would also have featured a new nose design. Some 25 aircraft were planned, but few were completed. Other variants were produced in very small numbers. A single A-6 pressurised transport was produced for Hitler's personal use, but ended up flying to Barcelona in late April 1945. Rumour has it that the aircraft carried some high-ranking Nazis intent on escape. Finally, no history of this aircraft would be complete without a mention of the Ju 390. This was a 'scaled-up' development of the Ju 290, with a lengthened fuselage and a longer wingspan with six engines. In early 1944, the second Ju 390 prototype (V2) flew from Mont-de-Marsan in France to within 20 km of the US coast near New York!
This is the latest 1/72 scale Wunderkit to be released by Revell AG, and it might be the last for a while, if Revell's release schedule for 2004 is anything to go by. Anyway, let's get straight to business. The kit comes in a large single-piece box - as with the Victor and Atlantic kits, the box is a bit deeper than it really needs to be. The kit comprises some 262 parts. Most are molded in light grey, with about 35 transparent parts. The rest of the parts are on seven sprues. The sprue layout in the instructions shows less sprues, as a couple have been presumably broken up before packaging. The transparency sprue is sealed in it's own plastic bag, and it and all the other sprues are sealed in another large plastic bag. Nothing had been broken off or damaged in my kit, which is always a possibility with so much plastic. Even though the box is on the large side, the main bag is the right size to prevent the sprues moving about too much.
At first approximation, the kit appears to be of the highest quality, which is as expected of course. The detailing is done mostly with crisply recessed panel lines, with some raised detailing and countersunk rivetting as appropriate. There is (obviously!) no flash, and no real mold seam to speak of. In fact, the tool design is very clever in that the parts are positioned so that they avoid crossing the mold seam wherever possible. In other cases, where the parts do cross the seam, they are positioned to that the seam can't really be seen anyway. I don't think I've ever seen this amount of thought put into a tooling layout before - maybe I need to go back and examine some other recent kits. The sink marks are few and far between, and they are always somewhere where they can't be seen, or else where they can easily be removed.
The decal sheet is very impressive, with suitable amounts of stencilling and other detail markings. There are no swastikas of course. Each of the subjects below would probably have carried large black-outlined swastikas. The instrument panel decals mostly have clear backgrounds, which is a good touch - this means that there will be no difficulty matching the instrument panel background colour with that used in the rest of the cockpit. However, Revell have still included instrument panel parts with raised detail (again!), and you can't really use the decals without sanding down the panel first. It's an either/or situation. The instruction booklet contains 24 pages (the last three pages are blank), and is predictably printed on what looks like recycled paper. There is nothing new in this booklet: the paint codes are strictly Revell, and only on the main painting guide are some of these keyed to RLM colours. The construction guide has now fewer than 76 steps, and while some people (i.e., me) might find this approach a bit stifling, at least Revell have left nothing to chance - if I mess something up in construction, then it's going to be my fault. The aircraft background on the front page is in German and English only - I am guessing that Revell produce other versions of the instructions in different languages for different localities. According to the instructions, the model was designed by Axel Deitz, who must be the same A. Deitz who brought us such previous masterpieces as the He 177 and B+V 222 kits.
There are four subject options:
I always thought that the upper camouflage of maritime Luftwaffe aircraft was usually RLM 72/RLM 73 (both Grun, apparently). The scheme of RLM 74/RLM 75 (Graugrun / Grauviolett) given in the instructions is more usually associated with fighters from 1941 to 1944. From the artwork and pictures of a completed model, I would say that Revell know what the right colours are, but that they have given the wrong codes. Note that Revell never mention the colour descriptions in the instructions. The aircraft interior colour is given as Revell 74. I don't have any direct Humbrol match for that, but as the description in the instructions is gunship grey, then we can take it that the colour is RLM 66 Schwartzgrau, which is Hu 92. The wheel wells, undercarriage and door interiors are all painted RLM 02 Grau (Hu 31). The propeller blades are painted RLM 70 Schwartzgrun - Hu 91. This colour detail is all standard.
The Ju 290 was a deceptively big aircraft - almost as big as a B-29 in terms of length and wingspan. If my sources are correct, it actually had a much greater wing area than the Superfortress. Taking this into account, the cost is very reasonable. The list price from Hannants is STG £ 20, but with a discount from my local model shop I got mine for about 31 Euro. It would be cheaper still if I lived in Germany, but the price that I paid isn't bad given that I live at the edge of Europe - literally true, since my house is about 400 metres from the Atlantic coast!
One feature you will not find in this kit is a detailed fuselage interior. The main cockpit and forward stations are extremely well detailed, as are the waist and tail gun positions. However, most of the fuselage walls and ceiling are bare, although there is a full floor. Obviously, Revell made the decision that it was not worth including this detail given the extra cost it would have entailed. The Ju 290 is being sold by Revell as a maritime reconnaissance aircraft, not as a transport. I would not be as confident as Johan De Wolf that Revell might produce a different version, even if the sprue layout allows for this - Revell are probably just keeping their options open. Another interesting design choice in the tooling is the use of central upper fuselage section, into which the dorsal turrets are put. This might also be taken as an indication that there are other versions in the work with different dorsal turret fits. Again, I think that is a long shot. Trumpeter don't have any inhibitions about producing multiple versions of very large 1/72 scale aircraft kits (e.g., Bear and Badger), but historically it seems to be different in Europe. If a new version of this kit ever does surface, I think it would be some years down the road.
There are a number of options in the kit. Obviously, there is the undercarriage up/down option, and Revell have addressed this in the kit. You have the choice of leaving the Trapoklappe ramp in the open position, although the instructions don't seem to explicitly mention this. I have seen a picture of a Ju 290 in flight with the ramp down, but I guess this was just a posed picture. The ramp could be used in theory to drop sticks of paratroops, but there was little or no opportunity to do this during the aircraft's service lifetime. When agents were dropped during clandestine missions, they generally used a special trapdoor. In normal circumstances, the ramp would only have been opened while on the ground. When this was done, the ramp was used to raise the fuselage to an almost level plane - see the picture below. Also, note how (at least in this shot) the control surfaces haven't drooped at all.
This is one of the earlier Ju 290's, with the single high dorsal turret, and no 'bubble' dome above the tail gunner position. This photo might well date from the Stalingrad airlift.
The kit also has optional defensive armament fits: the waist stations can be fitted with either MG 131 13 mm machine guns or MG 151/20 20 mm cannon. Actually, the instructions don't say that the MG 151's are the 20 mm version, so it's conceivable they might be MG151/15's. However, the aircraft data on the front page says the other weapons are 151/20's, so I presume these are as well. Depending on which waist gun that you choose, there are different internal details in terms of gun mounts, ammunition boxes and cartridge 'chutes, which is very impressive. Actually, the machine guns were used on the A-4 and the cannons on the A-5, so it seems as if you can build two variants of the Ju 290. On the subject of armament, the data doesn't list the MG 131 in the gondola rear, but it's there all right, along with other 4 MG 151/20's - forward gondola, 2 x dorsal turrets and tail position. The last optional item is the antennae array for the FuG 200 Hohentwiel search radar, which is an option that was also provided in the B+V 222 kit. These arrays must have had a really detrimental effect on performance.
As with the B+V 222 kit, the engines are extremely detailed and the cowlings are supplied in three parts. This again means that you can portray an aircraft with some of the engine detail exposed. The propellers are supplied as single units, and the blades have an unusual profile - curved on one side, and almost straight on the other. I can only assume Revell know what they're doing here. Although the main undercarriage units are extremely detailed, the undercarriage bays are quite bare, with just sidewalls and rear walls to blank them off. Again, this may have been a pragmatic decision by Revell to keep costs down - it's not as if there would be much to see through the narrow openings anyway.
More box art from the Hannants web site, this time some photos of a completed model from the side of the box. As stated earlier, you can't really see much of the main wheel well interior, so any detail here would have been wasted.
The rest of the kit is along expected lines. As well as the separate part for the dorsal section, there is also a single wing/fueslage piece incorporating the lower fuselage from the ramp almost all the way up to the nose, and extending out to just beyond the outer engine nacelles. I think that the completed kit will be structurally sound, although I agree with Johan de Wolf that something extra could be added to stiffen up and support the model. However, if the kit fits as well as everyone expects it to, then there might really be no need at all to strengthen the model. The enormous tail/elevator unit is molded as two lower parts and a single upper section, which should eliminate any chance of getting the angles wrong. There are hinges for both the main wing ailerons and tail elevators, and also horn balances for the elevators. Revell don't seem to want to produce a kit with separate (optional position) control surfaces, which is a pity. However, judging from the photograph shown earlier of the Ju 290 with the static control surfaces, maybe it's not such a big issue with this kit.
Above is another picture of a Ju 290 with the ramp deployed - this may be the same aircraft as in the first picture. Some of the detail shown here is not included in the kit, such as the central step section in the ramp. Along with the bare main fuselage walls, this gives some scope for the add-ons industry to produce extra detail products, not to mention conversion kits for some of the really exotic versions. The kit background information suggests that a tank could be carried by the Ju 290, but the weights don't add up. If you want to use this kit as the centrepiece of a diorama, then it would be more realistic to have some type of half-track going up or down the ramp.
Poring over the mold, I didn't see any significant differences in either shape or detail compared with plates and photos. Johan De Wolf thinks that the wingspan may be slightly short, but I would rather wait until I have assembled a kit of such great size before making a final judgement on this. I will defer to Johan on his comments regarding the position of the engine cowlings and exhausts. Certainly, it's clear from references that you should indeed be able to see the stubs of the exhausts projecting beyond the rear of the cowling - well spotted! If this is the only real flaw, then the kit has achieved a very high standard indeed.
(A few paragraphs have been appended to Johan De Wolf's review which is good reading in conjunction with above comments - Ed)
Another spectacular success for Revell. Once again, I am left rueing the fact that there is no British company either willing or able to produce new kits of aircraft such as the Short Sunderland, BAe Nimrod or Vickers Valiant. However, Revell themselves still have plenty of potential subjects to tackle - maybe they should now concentrate on giving us modern kits of such 'normal sized' aircraft as the Henschel 123, Dornier 17, Messerschmitt Bf 110 and Junkers 88!
My printed references were restricted to just two standard reference works:
A Google search threw up a few pages on the Junkers 290, but there was very little there that I didn't have in print already. The pictures used here are from Rod's WarBirds, a huge source of pictures for WW II German aircraft - over 1,600 at the last check. This is turn is part of the WarBird Pictures site, which also includes huge repositories of Japanese Army and Navy aircraft images (over 2,700), as well as hundreds of images of French, Italian and Soviet aircraft from WW II.
Addendum supplied by Iwailo Tzenow through Kevin Ronayne
The "Trapoklappe" was a feature of all the recce planes, but had no installation (winches etc) to operate it. Therefore it is in the kit, but should be closed on any of the given marking choices. I guess, Revell is just keeping the option for another variant in the future, like with the BV-222 (note the extra engines subassembly there, instead of direct mounts). There was a great article about building and detailing this kit in the recent issue of the german "Kit (Flugzeuge)" magazine (exhaust stubs, antennas, landing gear bays, armament). Plus another article about the planes history
Second Addendum supplied by Lothar Jolmes
On the subject of camouflage he also supplies the following information:
SMAKR
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