For those who don’t want to do 1/32 Fw-190s

Everybody always wonders, what will happen to their stash when they're gone? Will SWMBO just trash it? Well, not necessarily. CINC Le Chateu du Chat likes to go to estate sales. She has found lots of good stuff at great prices, as have I (we furnished the living room that way with stuff we could never have afforded otherwise). Every once in awhile, you run across some real gems. Last month, we (unknowingly) ended up at a sale for a modeler (nobody I knew here, but you know what hermits some modelers are). Snapped up a bunch of Hasegawa 1/48 at prices to make one weep given what they're charging today.

And thus I did this 1/48 Fw-190A-3. Since I have a decal dungeon that rivals the Bastille, I decided to do the most important Fw-190 of the war, that flown by Oberleutnant Armin Faber, Adjutant of III/JG 2, who saved the British the expense and bother of a commando raid on a German airfield to deposit a British test pilot in the cockpit of one of these "super fighters" and get it back to England, by mistaking the Bristol Channel for the English Channel and RAF Pentland for a German airfield on the Brittany peninsula.

Among all the other things they found out, insult was added to injury when they discovered the Germans had de-rated the BMW 801 by 250 h.p. to save wear and tear on the engine, and these airplanes were still flying rings around anything the RAF had! Comparative testing with a Spitfire IX showed that the Spitfire could stay in the same sky with the Wurger, but the outcome would really depend on pilot skill, they were that evenly matched.

It turns out that early Fw-190s were still in 71/02/65, as was well described in the report on Faber's airplane, which described it as painted 'light grey-green and dark green" on the upper surfaces. Right about the time this FW-built airframe (#313) came out of the factory, Fieseler was changing over to 74/75/76, so modelers can be excused their confusion with the Fw-190A-3 (A-1s and A-2s are definitely all 71/02/65 - A-4s and later are all 74/75/76 out of the factories). Painting done with Tamiya paints. I used an old Aeromaster sheet for the markings.

Faber himself was sent to Canada as a POW, where he eventually managed to convince his jailers that he had a fatal disease, and was repatriated in early 1944. Returning to service, he was shot down and killed in combat over the eastern front later that year. (Making his "fatal disease" wanting to be a fighter pilot.)

Over the years, there have been allegations he defected with the airplane, but the later events in his career as a POW would seem to put the lie to that.

So the answer to the question posed at the outset is, perhaps your stash will get grabbed by a vulture like me, and will finally see the light of day. 🙂

11 additional images. Click to enlarge.