Condor 1/72 V2/A4 Rocket

CONDOR 1:72 A4/V2 ROCKET

Reviewer: Peter Hobbins (rec.models.scale)
Kit Review submitted: 20 April 2002

Condor 1/72 German Missile A4/V2 (Kit No. 72001)
AUD$6 from NKR Models

History

Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the Wehrmacht was forbidden heavy artillery after WWI; the Germans complied with the letter but not the spirit of the Treaty and began investigating other long-range offensive weapons, including rocketry. After a series of experiments through the 1930s that involved the A1, A2 and A3 test rockets, the A4 design was first worked out in 1936 but took many further years of development – including the A5 series – before a reliable weapon system was produced. Efforts to bring this missile to service readiness were hampered by two major events: Hitler’s cancellation of long-term research projects in 1940, and the allied bombing raids on the rocket research facilities at Peenemünde in 1943. Nevertheless, on 8 September 1944 the Wehrmacht began launching the second of Hitler’s ‘revenge weapons’ (vergeltungswaffe 2 or V-2) at the allies, with nearly 1,500 being fired before VE day, most of which were aimed at London. Post-war, captured A4/V-2 rockets formed the basis of both US and Soviet experiments into space flight and offensive missile development until newer designs became available in the early 1950s.

The kit

I still marvel at just how cheap our hobby really is, when you can buy a project to occupy you over Easter for just $6. This A4/V-2 kit by Condor – apparently a subsidiary of MPM – contains a surprising 43 parts, mostly for the launch base. While I love working with MPM’s plastic, in this case the detail on all the parts was a bit soft, and in fact the moulds were slightly misaligned, leaving a fairly prominent ridge on all of the small parts. There are no decals – which makes sense when you consider the V-2 travelled several times faster than sound – but the kit contains an 8-page A5 instruction booklet (half on construction, and half giving two painting options from all four sides). The instructions spell out the colours to be used giving Humbrol, Molak (!) and FS 595a references. I felt the instructions themselves could have been more clearly put together, and it would have been nice to have at least one picture or diagram of the completed launch pad.

Construction

Not surprisingly, the rocket itself goes together pretty easily – just join the two halves together, add two fins, the rocket cone and some thrust deflectors, and "Bob’s yer uncle". Well, not quite. The main body of the rocket is moulded with a textured surface which not only doesn’t match my memories of a smooth-skinned V-2 at the Point Cook RAAF Museum in Melbourne, but also creates a problem when sanding the join lines: basically, I had to sand the rest of the body smooth at the same time. After this I attached the remaining two fins – first with standard glue to allow me to evenly space them both horizontally and vertically, then with superglue for strength. These joins then needed a decent amount of filler and sanding to smoothly fair them in. The rocket cone also needed some sanding before it fitted into the hole at the bottom of the missile. Four small pieces of plastic or metal rod need to be inserted at the bottom of the fin fairings – do this, because they really become a useful way to get the V-2 to sit solidly on its stand.

The launch stand was far more time consuming, but mainly because I had to laboriously scrape and sand the moulding ridges off all the small parts, then work out how they all went together. There were also a few ejector pin marks that had to be filled and sanded. Getting all the legs to sit straight and align with each other was also a challenge – again, I’d suggest normal glue followed by strengthening superglue. Keep in mind that the top half of the base shouldn’t be glued to the bottom part, in order to allow the launch pad to be rotated.

Versions and decals

As mentioned, there are two quite detailed painting diagrams in the instructions – one for a splotchy pattern and another splinter style that I chose (based mainly on memories of similar markings on the Point Cook V-2). I was originally going to paint the missile in the alternating black-and-white patches used on the experimental V-2s, or the black-and-yellow scheme used in post-war US testing, but couldn’t resist the intricate masking required for a splinter scheme – a nice change from the softer RAAF camouflage demarcations that I’m used to painting. After a grey priming coat and some more sanding, I sprayed white, then masked this section off, grey – and masked again – then finally black, all in Tamiya acrylics. For such a simple kit there was an amazing amount of masking involved with the trusty Tamiya tape, so if you hate this process then I’d recommend freehand spaying of the sand/red brown/medium green splotchy scheme. The missile stood up on its own fins during spraying, although the exhaust cavity could easily accommodate a painting ‘handle’ if desired. While the instructions indicated the launch pad should be in sand, I felt this didn’t match the look of my missile so I went for Wehrmacht grey with black highlights.

Weathering the missile presented a problem – after all, the V-2s pretty much went straight from the slave labour camps to their launch sites – so I just added a bit of highlighting to the panel lines and the small seam around the belly of the rocket with pastels. My references didn’t mention whether the launch stands survived the intense heat of take-off – although it would have made for a challenging paint job if they did – so I just made it look a bit rusty as I assumed the stands were cheaply constructed and hastily painted for single use.

I felt the completed kit looked a bit sterile, so I found a Wehrmacht soldier in the spares box and painted him up to accompany the rocket – he helps add a sense of scale, too, I think.

Conclusions

I bought this kit because it was so cheap and seemed so simple that I thought I could knock it over in an evening, paint it almost as quickly, and act as a nice diversion from the much more involved vacform and resin conversions I’ve been working on lately. However, all the work involved in preparing the small parts, plus the filling and sanding required for the main rocket, really dragged out construction. Choosing the splinter scheme made it an even longer process, but I had lots of fun painting the soldier and in the end I’m quite happy with the overall effect. In terms of accuracy the completed missile comes out slightly under scale but still looks pretty much right, although after inspecting references it appears there are some missing panel lines. I would love to see a launch trailer for this kit – perhaps even a fuel tanker, which could make for a great, simple diorama. Although it was more work than I originally planned, I quite enjoyed putting this kit together and I like the way it sits head and shoulders above its ‘primitive’ subsonic brethren on the shelf.

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