Monday, 16 February 2015

FoW Arado AR234

Another little project for Tiger Phil at the Deeside Defenders club.  This time a Battlefront Arado AR234.  This was a fairly straightforward model to assemble, just the engine nacelles and the external bomb load in white metal to fix to the one piece resin casting. The kit comes with a chunky clear plastic flight stand, which needs assembling and a pair of neodymium magnets, one for the recess in the fuselage and one for the top of the flight stand.  You also get a set of decals, which I'm leaving for Phil to apply, and a FoW air support dice.

The aircraft was spray undercoated in Vallejo light grey primer.  Panel edges and control surface edges were picked out in Vallejo NATO black.  Then the top and sides were painted in Vallejo model air Green RLM62 and the underside in Vallejo Sky Blue.  A camouflage pattern was added in olive green, made by mixing equal parts of reflective green and yellow green in a relatively angular splinter pattern.  Engines were initially painted NATO black, then dark sand for turbine bosses and flat red for the rim of the engine nacelles.  Finally, the cockpit canopies were painted azure and dry brushed white.  The aircraft was coated in Vallejo matt varnish and canopies were then varnished using Vallejo gloss.

From the front quarter.
 
Rear quarter, allied piston engine fighters would almost certainly not be able to catch it from this position.

The underside, showing external load bombs slung from hard points underneath the engines.  Seems like an awful lot of technology to carry two comparatively small bombs.

Quite a nice model to put together and paint.  Not too many uses unless you're planning to try and bomb the Ludendorff Bridge, but could be used for those very late war battles with the Western Allies or the Soviet hordes.

Thanks for looking.

2 comments:

  1. Looks really good Andy, and I'm sure Phil will find more than one use for it! Typical of the German thinking mid to late on in the war to create a technological work of art which was unable to do quite the role they needed by being unable to carry enough in terms of bombs.

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  2. Thanks Rick. It was quite a nice model to paint, although the camouflage pattern is a bit dull - seems like it was in real life too. I wonder where Phil will try and use it next? It seems they didn't make an appearance until March 1945, so options are a bit limited.
    Cheers, Andy

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