Flying Boats and First World Problems

Right now, the tiny plastic thing I've been building is a flying boat: a 1/144 Be-12 "Chaika" (Gull) from Amodel. It is now not so far from done, with the basic painting done, and I'm pleased with how it is turning out.  The work has been  slow, admittedly, essentially because Amodel is not kidding when they say you should have some experience building models before attempting their kits. I'll be writing up a full kit review once it is finished.

I've been fairly busy lately with the real world, but have had some time to think about why exactly I think this or that model kit is interesting enough to buy. With airplanes, at least, the dominant trend seems to be obscurity. With the Fw 200 and the He 219, I was drawn to the kits partially because I wanted to know more about the aircraft in question. It's a similar story with the Be-12. (What's a Be-12 you might ask: well, [assuming a slightly smug and superior tone] it is a cold war turboprop Soviet seaplane rarely seen in the west - used first for anti-submarine work and later as a general purpose search and rescue/patrol amphibian. In use for decades, it was so well liked by crews and so useful in these utility-infielder roles that it remained flying post Cold war.) Anyway, I've always had a slight fascination with it, I think mostly because it was a plane with little information about it in those "aircraft of the world" encyclopedias that I used to read when I was a wee barin. It is a interesting aircraft in its own right, too: (not the least of which is that it is a Soviet take on a type of aircraft Canada used to be quite good at designing) but I think part of this is that lack of information.

Given some of the contents of this blog, this "interest-obscurity" line graph seems to reach its peak with "obscure German aircraft of the Second World War", with most of these also being rather large aircraft. And here we get to the "problems that are not really problems" part of the post. Revell is re-releasing a kit that is right up this alley I just defined: their kit of the Blohm und Voss Bv 222 "Viking". The Viking flying boat was the largest aircraft that saw service in the Second World War .

When to even get it ashore you need the beaching gear for a large fishing boat, you know your flying boat is big.

As you might figure, the largest aircraft in World War 2 was pretty damn big, as long as a actual Viking Longship, with similar carrying capacities. 37 meters long with a nearly 50 m wingspan (or 150 ft if you prefer) the Bv 222 bosted two decks: an actual flight deck for the crew and a cargo deck below it.  It had six engines and a crew of 10 or 11, and a flat load floor like a modern transport plane. The production variant had the Blohm and Voss diesel aircraft engines - which put out a typical for the time 1000 hp - but gave the Bv 222 a incredible-even-by-today's standards endurance of 28 hours.The diesel engines also allowed refueling at sea from U-boat fuel tanks - a feature that could have been used for all sorts of shenanigans if the Allies had not made a extra special effort to sink all of Germany's resupply submarines. It was even suggested that they be used to fly cargo to Japan in a 'great circle' route over the North Pole from northern Norway to Manchuria.

The main flaw with the Viking was predictable if you've been reading the megaposts - low production. Only 12 were ever made. While a flying boat heavy transport was appreciated in the Reich, the 5 bombers or 10 fighters each aircraft represented were seen as a better investment of resources . This view was further supported when crews reported that even when the Viking was festooned with turrets, it was almost comically vulnerable to enemy fighters, both thanks to its giant size and its giant-sized blind spot in its defenses caused by the lack of a tail turret. While the Luftwaffe of World War 2 was never risk-averse when it came to crews or airplanes, the fact that there were so few Bv 222s meant that they could only operate in uncontested airspace. While some of them were equipped with FuG 200 anti-ship radars, scouting for U-boats in the Atlantic was about the extent of the Bv 222's combat career. Used almost exclusively for their logistic capabilities, remaining Bv 222s were sent to Norway post invasion of Normandy in 1944. The Vikings were captured by the allies, and both the British and the Americans did extensive flight tests with them. Some aspects of the Viking design may have influenced the Convair R3Y Tradewind, and some other oddball "giant flying boat" projects the British and Americans experimented with in the 1950s.

Anyway, I'm getting a bit sidetracked here by the history: back to the kit. It's 1/72 scale, and while not on the scale of the 'where the hell would I even put it' level of the 1/72 B-36 Revell makes...it still is a very large plane, with over 2 ft of wingspan.

And here we return to first world problems: shopping online is by itself pretty fun and addicting with scale models, as once you learn your way around, the selection is just enormous.  So you quickly end up with a 'backlog' of kits - in my case, three large and at least 6 smaller projects - something close to a year's worth of building tiny things out of plastic for me. And I want to keep that backlog sort of under control - after all, shopping looses some of its fun if you take forever to actually get around to build the damn things. (I have a Tamiya I-400 special edition that has been waiting at least a year to be the central subject of my first diorama.) And, one of these large projects in my closet is Revell Germany's Ju 290 - so if I get the sudden itch to build something large and Teutonic with splinter camo, bam!  Right there, in the stash. I even bought some aftermarket details for it: metal landing gear, masks, and photo-etch FuG 200 antennas.

I also feel that as a rule in life, you should focus on what you have, right now. 

So, as cool as the Bv 222 kit is, I should not buy it.

No.

Definitely not...