1/48 Tamiyas Do 335 
converted to a Do 635

by Arnold Cremers

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What if, Germany hade won the battle of the Bulge and the Allies where thrown back to the sea and had to evacuate.

To help the Russians they would send more convoys to Murmansk. To spot these convoys for their submarine fleet, the Germans used their new reconnaissance aircraft. This was the Dornier Do 635.  

I know it is just my imagination, but it’s something for a great project, and here it is, my Dornier Do 635 in 1/48.

It was converted from two Tamiya’s Do 335’s.

It took me some 6 months to build it. There are some resin sets which I used in it. They where the cockpit set from Aires (nr 4101), the Fuel fuselage tank and the engine set from CMK (nr 4086 and 4085) and I used the extended wingset from Paragon (nr 48064).

The model was inspired by the book of the Do 335 from Aviatic verlag in Germany. There were some drawings in it and some text whom I did use.

It was a plane intended for reconnaissance over the Atlantic to spot convoys for their submarines. The first plans for this aircraft was discussed by the RLM (Reichs Luftfahr Ministerie) in 1943. The plans where to produce 5 aircraft a month starting in may 1945. It was fast enough (725 km/h) to outrun the beaufighter and the mosquito. It had a range of 7600 km.  

The right fuselage was build out of the box. The left fuselage was changed to accommodate the cockpit set, fuselage tank set and the engine set.

After this was done, did I changed the outside wings to accommodate the Heinkel wings from Paragon. This set is originally for the Monogram kit, but after some measuring (by putting the outer wing to the Tamiya wing to know where the right point was for the connection) and dry fitting it could be glued together.

Then came the most difficult part of the conversion. The centre wing.

The centre wing had to be scratch built. With the use of the inner part of the left and right wing (just after the wheel bays) and some plastic sheet and plastic rods was the wing mainly build. Plastic beams were used in the main construction of the wing, to get a good solid wing. I used a blown up drawing to get the right distance and the right angle for the wing to both fuselages (it is important to get a angle of 90 degrees between the wing and the left and right fuselage). With the beams connected to the left and right fuselage I could begin to build up the wing with the inner parts of the original wing.  After some days of good drying, I finished the wing with plastic sheet, a copper rod, for the wing front, and a lot of putty.  Two weeks later, I began the sanding and more putty and more sanding and then finally was the wing ready. Then it was just building as normal. 

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Now was it time for painting. This big airplane now had a span of almost 60 centimeter, so I needed a lot of paint. The paint I use is almost always from Tamiya.  I painted the underside RLM 76 and the upperside RLM 72 and RLM 73 (these are the maritime colours).  After some days of good drying,  I masked the parts of the airplane and painted these white, like you use to see in some pictures of German maritime airplanes.  At the same time, I painted on the German crosses with the help of paintmasks from a set for the He 177 (1/72) from Eduard. Then it was time to paint the aircraft with Future for the decals. After two days of drying, came the time to put the few decals on the airplane. These came from a decal sheet from Xtradecal and some modified Dutch decals. The swastika’s came out of the box.

After another coat of Future it was time for the panellines. This was done by a mixture of Tamiya paint, water and some dishwash luquid. I got this idea out of the fine scale modeller.  After another day of drying, it was time to put the final coat of matt varnish (testors) on the airplane.

The Do 635 was standing for over a week to dry. Then it was time to finish it, by putting the modified main wheels on (making the middle legs a bit shorter, to get all the main wheels to hit the surface) and all the little parts  that were left.    

This was a huge project for me, but it was worth it.

This project was built for the 40th birthday of IPMS UK (Scale modelworld) in 2003. This model won the Hypothetical aircraft class (23) as well as the Mushroom model publications Award.  I enjoyed it so much that I am going to do another project just like this for the next scale modelworld show in 2004.

Arnold

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Photos and text © by Arnold Cremers