Italeri 2769 Junkers Ju 87B-2 Picchiatello (Giuseppe Cenni)

Kit#: 2769.

Price: 39$

Decals: Five options.

Notes: Good fit, but the clear parts are too narrow to fit on the cockpit opening.

History:

"The Ju 87 dive bomber is certainly one of the most famous airplanes of WW2. This characteristic inverted gull wing aircraft became famous at the early stage of the war and it can be coseidered, together with the Werhmacht's Panzer Divisio, the symbol of the Blitzkrieg. The Italian Regia Aeronautica requested to its German ally a certain number of Stukas to equip its ground attack and Dive Bomber squadrons. The Ju 87B units arrived in the Summer of 1940 and went to equip 96° Gruppo Bombardamento a Tuffo. The Ju 87, either in the B-2 version, or in the extended range R-2, equipped other Gruppo di Volo for a total of 150 aircraft. The Italian Stuka, named "Picchiatello," was used by the Regia Aeronautica over Malta, North Africa and in the Mediterranean."  

The Kit:

The kit has a total of 8 sprues, seven light grey and one clear. Parts are cleanly molded, without flash. There is also a small photoetch fret and a rubber hose to be used on the engine. There're options for five aircraft in the beautifully done decal sheet, three Italian, one British, and one German (the Snake Stuka).

The Build:

I began by painting all the cockpit parts on their sprues with Revell 45 (RLM 02). The ammo drums were painted black. Once all the paint was dry, I glued all the cockpit parts together and left them to dry. Italeri provides two options for the instrument panel: a photoetch piece or a flat plastic piece where you can put a decal. I chose the latter option.

While the cockpit was drying, I began with the construction of the wings. These are a simple thing of a single lower and two upper parts. The lower wing needs to have the holes for the SC50 and SC250 bomb racks opened, so I did that and then glued the wings.

Back to the cockpit, now that it was dried, I glued it to one fuselage half, left it to settle for some minutes, and glued the fuselage half. These assembly didn´t give me any issues and it was filler free. I then glued the wings to the fuselage assembly and left it aside to dry.

Next, I began to work on the engine. Italeri provides a complete engine, and gives you the option to expose it by not gluing the cowling panels. Since I wanted to have my plane with everything closed, I built up the entire engine and left it unpainted. I glued everything and then glued the engine to the firewall of the fuselage. I also at this stage glued the horizontal stabilizers and set the entire model to dry.

Painting and Decals:

With thise aircraft, I decided to try a new approach for the camouflage. I painted the entire airframe first with Revell 39 Dark Gren (RLM 71), and then masked the areas that needed to be in RLM 70 (Revell 40 Black Green). When I removed the tape, I discovered there weren´'t any paint ridges due to the brushing, so I left the surfaces alone. The undersides were painted in Revell 49 (RLM 65). The nose received a yellow band as per the instructions.

I also painted the landing gear and glued it to the aircraft. The model was then glosscoated for the decals.

The decals are beautifully printed and reacted perfectly to Microsol. When I finished the decalling, I left the decals to dry for 24hs before proceeding to the next phase, which was matt coating the entire aircraft.

Final construction:

This envolved painting the propeller and the clear parts. The clear parts were easily the worst part of the kit, they're too narrow to fit above the cockpit opening, so I fought a bit with them before managing to glue them in place.

Conclusions:

Not a bad kit, but the clear parts are definitely the worst part of the kit. However, this won´t put me off from buying more Italeri Stukas. It definitely looks good against the Hasegawa G-2.

Bibliography:

Kit instructions.