Focke Wulf Fw190 D-10

Backround many of you will have probably heard of the fw 190d9 while so.e have heard of the d12 and d13 but i guess none of you, even i havent heard of a d10 . That is because only one existed. The d10 was used to test the jumo 213 with a motorkanone armament. The d10 featured either 3 20mm cannons or 2 20mm and a 30mm cannon which means its co figuration is much like the d12 and d13 . Not much is known about the d10 . But it probably behaved a lot like the other doras. This means that it was among the best wwii fighter aircraft. The d series were all improvements of the a model which was a very well aircraft but suffered from poor high altitude percormance. To counter the new high flying american fighters the 190 was fitted with the powerful jumo 213 engine which had a poweroutput of over2000 ps at full throttle abd with wep. The engine was however larger as it was a liquid cooled inline v12 instead of the a models bmw 801 radial. This resulted in a much longer nose which gave fhe fw 190 ist characteriyti al appearence. The new engine also dramatically improved performance. The d series was much much faster rea hing almost 700kph altitude. The maneuverability was also improved and its rate of climb also increased. The only negative effect was that the roll rate was reduced marginally. However the new heavier engine also brought with it a reduced armament for the d9 which only had 2 20mm and 2 13mm guns as opposed to the 4 20mm ca nons anx2 13mm maxhine guns in the a8. With the d12 and d13 this was however solved with placing a motorkanone into the aircraft. The high Performance together with the heavy armament made the d series a very potent interceptor as well as a fighter and even a fighter bomber as it could be equipped with bombs for ground attack duties. In aerial combat the dora proofed itself a fearsome opponent beeing on par or better than the latest allied types. It was however often used in guarding the me 262 airfields from enemy fighter attack when the 262s landed when they were the most vulnerable. Here they worked together with ta 152s in the last months of the war. To help identify the 190s by friendly flak gunners the underside of the aircraft of one such platzschutzstaffel was painted brightly red with white
stripes. All in all the d series was a very deadly opponent and was well likex by its crew. It performed excellent and was relatively easy to handle with good visibility from its bubble canopy that was taken from the fw 190f and g series. However not all doras had this canopy as it was put on the aircraft almost randomly when it was available. Further improvements would have led to the fw 190D 14 and 15 but none coild be finished of these before the war ended. Today i think ojly one d series machine survives and its actually in running condition but it hasnt flown so far which is very sad cause i would love to see it in the air once more and hear the actual sound of a jumo 213 in real life. Lets hope that the aircraft will one day fly again.

the kit: a hobby boss kit and what a kit it is. It costs 20euro and is in 1/48 scale.
Detail : the kit is amazingly detailed and also comes with photo etched parts. The cockpit detail is very good qnd the engine is also partually included. In the real thing you could see through the landing gear bay onto the back of the engine which is also exactly representated in the kit. It is a very well detailed kit die have to say
*****
Quality: no flash almost no sinkmarks , a high quality kit
*****
Fitting:yeah..... its actually pretty amazing, the kit fits very well ,the fuselage halves were no problem . Only the wing joining to the fuselage was not entirely perfect with a little gap .
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decals: oh boy the decals. They are certainly not bad and are thin and very well done when it comes to the colours and thr degree of shining etc. But they are not very easy to handle easily fold up and difficult to apply once curled up. But whats the worst are the spelling errors on some decals. This is sth that shouldnt happen imo.
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Extrapoints well die ts a very well doje kit with and you can actually slide the canops back and forth which is a nice gimmick although thepropeller isnt movable sadly. The d series is one hell of a good loooking aircraft and so is the finished kit. I had lot of fun assebling it and i'm glad finally have such a machine in my colle tion although the real d10 was only built once. The kit qlso features bombs to add on the plane but i wanted mine to have the streamlined outlining of a fighter not a fighted bomber.
*****
Result: a really high recommended kit . If you can get your hands on one you should get it its a very very good and easy to assemble kit that also is suited for beginner yet it has the detail to please the more experienxed modeller
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