Revell 1/32 Focke-Wulf Ta 152H-0 Conversion

By Piet Bouma

The Ta 152H was a high altitude fighter with a considerable wing-span when compared to the predecessor Fw 190D… The only 1:32 scale kit that I read about was a hard to get vacu-form kit. Renowned kit producers like Hasegawa, Tamiya, Dragon and Revell did not have a 1:32 Ta 152 in their range of products… (That’s amazing, really…)

At one of our Ureterp IPMS meetings I bought a 1:32 Revell/Monogram Fw 190D-9 (“Lone Eagles series”) which still had raised panel lines; the box was dated 1990. It was cheap (€ 12,-) and therefore I decided I could have a go at it by chopping it up and trying to kit-bash and convert it into a Ta 152H…

Some of the problems faced:

The nose of the aircraft had to be lengthened so that the bigger engine (Junkers Jumo 213E) and Motorkanone could be housed…- The left and right wing should be moved forward along the fuselage

The cannons and main landing gear should be placed further away from the fuselage

The wing span should be enlarged considerably as the Ta 152H was a high altitude fighter

The vertical tail area should be enlarged to the standard wooden Ta 152 tail (Which can be found in every Revell and Hasegawa 1:32 Fw 190D-9 kit nowadays)

The gear bays and doors are different; there are even two small gear doors near the middle of the aircraft fuselage The wing roots are bigger near the fuselage (to improve aerodynamics)

The large wing-flaps should be constructed from plastic sheet

To deal with the problems faced as described above, was possible; the ingredients for tackling them were: patience, perseverence, lots of milliput putty and some sheets of polystyrol plastic (of 0.75 and 1.5 mm thick) The necessary drawings and photographs were enlarged to 1:32 scale on the computer and manipulated by means of Corel PhotoPaint and CorelDraw 9.0. After printing and glueing the A4 drawings together (I don’t have an A3 printer) my first impression was that this Ta 152H was a really big one engined aircraft (wingspan 1:32 scale: some 45 cm)

Kitbashing + Scratchbuilding the Fuselage

The wing roots were cut off from the fuselage and were placed forward more than 1 cm along the horizontally cut line; the open spaces were filled up with plastic sheet. The nose was lengthened appropriately in the same way; this was rather tricky, because I had decided to expose the Jumo 213E engine The extra engine details were built up of polystyrol sheet, brass rod and putty. The cowling-flaps were scratchbuilt from polystyrol sheet. The air inlet on the right side of the enormous nose was made of a bomb from an F-104G Starfighter kit (that awaits being built) and lots of puttyThe tail unit had to be corrected; I decided to cut off the front edge of the tail and reposition it at the correct angle. The open space thus created was filled up with putty and sanded into the correct shape when the putty was drying (A wet piece of sanding paper made the job a bit easier) The pylon shaped armour head-rest was not in the Revell-Monogram kit, so I had to construct that as well; polystyrene tube and sheet were used, together with a bit of putty.

The engine doors have a different construction in comparison to the earlier Focke-Wulf aircraft (that have different engines too). Construction: the previously mentioned sheet material in combination with the original kit door. A brass rod keeps the doors open

Kitbashing + Scratchbuilding the Wings

As you can see on the photograph(s), I decided to use some part of the original kit wings (green colour). The rest of the wings was built around these original parts. The main spar of the wing was supposed to give the large wing some strength (and shape), so I constructed this first (polystyrol sheet, 1.5 mm thick). The ribs were glued into position, so that the the 0.75 mm polystyrol sheet could be glued around them for additional strength and to be able to create the exact shape of the Ta 152H wings Getting it right three-dimensionally was the most important item during this task..! Ailerons and flaps were made from this 0.75 mm sheet as well and were put into position after the wings had been corrected with putty and sanded for an extremely long time The wheel wells and two extra gear doors under the fuselage were created with polystyrol sheet and putty. The cannons, the pitot tube and the landing gear indicators (that come out of the wing when the main landing gear is down) were constructed of brass tube and glued to the wings. The easy way of glueing: pre-heat the brass indicators and simply press the end into the wing Note that the gear indicators are in a different position than on Fw 190 aircraft

The length of the antenna wire was checked with the canopy in the closed position, so when the canopy was opened again the correct length revealed the amount of antenna sag Ta 152H aircraft did not have an “Umlenkrolle”; a little wheel and a spring at the end of the antenna – so that the antenna did not sag after opening the canopy

The Airbrush Colours

I wanted to airbrush my 1:32 scale Ta as a 152H-0 of Stab (=Staff) / Jagdgeschwader 301. I chose ‘green 4’ that was regularly flown by Walter Loos, among others. The red and yellow tail band brought some extra colour in the picture

A lot has been written about “the correct RLM-colours”, the main conclusion is; it’s the artist’s choice, ability and experience So that is a personal matter. Since this is my second model after a long time and my second model after having bought an airbrush, I decided to go along with the colour chips provided in the excellent Hikoki Publications book “Luftwaffe Colours – 1935-1945”, by Michael Ullmann. In our town there was no way to get my hands on Gunze-Sangyo, Extracolor, or whatever other sorts of paints which are mentioned in kit reviews most of the times, so I simply bought Revell Color Enamels and started mixing them until I came up with some colours really close to the earlier mentioned colour chips. This is what I used:

RLM 76 - Revell SM374 + lots of Matt White
RLM 82 - Revell Matt48 + Humbrol Enamel 150 (equal amounts)
RLM 83 - Revell Matt48 + Humbrol Enamel 150 + Revell Matt46

(In mixing the RLM 83 colour I used almost equal amounts of 48 and 46, and 150; just a bit more on the 48 and a bit less of the 46) For weathering the colours I added an extra amount of matt white to the colours above, which I airbrushed after the original coating had dried. Additional weathering was done with my mix of RLM 76 with Revell Matt45 (the almost vertical dirt streaks along the fuselage and engine cowling); this was applied very lightly Some extra streaks of green (a variation of RLM 82) was applied on the upper part of the aircraft, since they were parked under the trees (for camouflage purposes) most of the time In one Autumn the aircraft appearance could change rapidly in the harsh European weather

Try to experiment with colours and effects; you won’t regret it! As for building models, remember: the only limit is your imagination!

The Diorama

The Compass Swing Table or “Kompensierscheibe” as the Germans call it, could be dealt with in part two, if you’re interested in what it was used for and how it worked

The Photographs

All of the photographs were taken with a Nikon Coolpix 995 digital camera. The pictures with the nice background were taken outside with the diorama on top of the roof of our car I used a tripod, because shutter speeds were rather low; the higher the aperture number the sharper the aircraft and the background get (e.g. 1/30 of a second with aperture f 7.7)

Your site is most inspiring, so I’d like to end with this; “Keep up the good work and many happy landings..!”