1/72 Special Hobby Me 264 "Amerika Bomber"

Gallery Article by Mike Glinski on Jan 24 2011

 

The Messerschmitt Me 264 was one of a number of German projects during WWII to create a long-range bomber with the capability of bombing the United States.  It was unique in that it was one of the few proposals that resulted in a flyable prototype, and the only one which was a completely new design (the other being the Ju 390, which was an extension of an existing airplane).  What makes this feat even more amazing is that it did so in climate where nearly everything was working against it.  Official Luftwaffe doctrine placed a low importance on the long-range bomber as a whole early in the War, and toward the end the need for defensive fighters made the offensive bomber seem like a bad idea (even to the Nazis).  Even among long-range bomber projects the Messerschmitt design had few supporters- early on the preferred choice was the Ta 400 (a development of the Fw 300, which itself was a development of the Fw 200) due to the latter's better performance figures.  Keep in mind that the Ta 400 was nothing but a paper project at this point.  When it became clear the Ta 400 was never going to be built in time, focus shifted to the other extreme.  In the desire to get a flyable bomber as soon as possible, emphasis was placed on a Ju 390- by all accounts a solid (but not that stellar) development of the proven Ju 290.  The only reason the Me 264 got as far as it did was that its development had a head start on nearly every other project, work beginning in 1937.

Click on images below to see larger images

  

  

  

The Me 264 V1 first took to the air in 1942.  It became immediately clear that, while it was a very advanced aircraft for the time, it was never going to fulfill the requirement of flying the 7500 miles needed for a trip to the United States and back.  It was plagued with numerous gremlins and technical problems, some minor but some quite severe.  Flight testing continued until 1944, pausing for a few months in late 1943 when the original Jumo 211 in-line engines were replaced with BMW 801 radials.  In July 1944 the V1, along with the nearly completed V2 and parts for the V3, was destroyed in an Allied bombing raid.  Despite this work on the basic 264 designed continued until nearly the end of the War, most of it concerned with various engine arrangements.

The Me 264 has been one of my favorite aircraft, and when it comes to 1/72 the Special Hobby kit is your only option.  It's also one of modeling's great fallacies.  You see, the kit doesn't represent any real aircraft.  It features Jumo engines (which the V1 had), and a pair of long, tapered wings.  Longer, in fact than the V1 ever had.  Now, there were plans to add extended wingtips to the V2 version onward.  Only problem?  They were all to be fitted with BMW radials.  Because I wanted to build an accurate V1, the wingtips needed to be chopped off.  New wingtips were shaped from laminated styrene.

The only other major item of note is the engines.  I don't really like the engines supplied with the kit.  Despite having quite beautiful resin radiator fronts, the rest of them look.... not so beautiful.  One of the most prominent parts of the Jumo nacelle, the cowl flaps, aren't even scribed into the kit parts.  Given the high quality of the rest of the kits, unless something is done about it, they just bring the look of the kit down.  Besides, I like the look of the BMWs better anyway, and I had a few lying around from a failed Revell Germany Ju 290 model.

The actual build was rather uneventful.  Major points of interest:

-  It's VERY easy for this model to be a tail sitter.  I packed the entire fuselage in front of the main landing gear with weight, and filled up both inner nacelles, and still ended up with a plane that's nearly a tail-sitter.

-  The first time I painted it, I had half the paint lift off with the masking tape.  This required an extra few days of stripping and re-painting, and the final result isn't as perfect as I'd like it to be.

-  The Revell Germany BMW radial cowls lack the exposed exhaust pipes that were on the real thing.  I added them myself using stretched sprue.  All 56 of them.

-  I took great care in gluing, masking, and sanding the two-piece front canopy, and it turned out almost perfectly.  It wasn't until the build was 99.99% finished that I realized I had the front nose cap on crooked.  Thankfully, the process of removing, re-gluing,and re-blending it into the model wasn't as horrible as it could have been.

-  Weathering was done using pencil graphite.  It's subtle, more durable than pastels, and (in my opinion) works wonderfully.

I'm really happy with how this build turned out.  Lately it seems I've been bitten by the "Amerika Bomber" bug, and in fact have two Ju 290 kits in transit right now.  Two guesses what THOSE are going to be used for (and the first guess doesn't count).

Mike Glinski

Click on images below to see larger images

  

  

  

  

Photos and text © by Mike Glinski