Polikarpov Po-2 Kartonowa Kolekcia 1:33

[Leif Ohlsson]

Cjwalas wrote:

I can't stop trying to find out more on the Night Witches!

Then, Chris, this is for you - a full-length feature film about the Night Witches from the 1980s, uploaded just about a week ago.

Be warned - the dialogue is Russian, no text; advertisements for a money exchange firm pop up in the film and have to be closed regularly; plus a few asinine commercials now and then that you cant' get rid of and have to suffer (including at the very start).

Otherwise, the quality is quite decent; the plot no worse than any other standard war film with male lead characters; and the Po-2 is featured fairly frequently.

I attach a few snapshots from the film (yes, I watched it all). From a technical point view, you get at view of how the rear-seat machinegun was fastened (last two photos).

Leif

PS. I should say that there is one VERY good documentary about the Night Witches. And it was made by a Swedish film maker, Gunilla Bresky, for the Swedish Television. I watched it when it was aired just about a year ago, and there were fascinating interviews with several of the Night Witches who are still alive. Unfortunately, I've found no way to get hold of it. For reference, read about it here.

[cjwalas]

Leif, thanks for the links. I hope the History Channel does get of the documentary. It sounds great. I scanned through the movie this morning and will watch it completely later. While it doesn't appear to be the best film ever made, some of the scenes are effective at hinting at the experience of the Night Witches. While they look very staged, the scenes of the Po-2s in flames are still powerful and the scenes of the pilots and ground crew waiting for the returning (or not) planes give some insight into what it must have been like. I wonder if there's a subtitled version of the film out there.
Chris

[Leif Ohlsson]

The succint reference by Charlie above leads to an extremely rich source (I would say the source) for Po-2 references which deserves a deeper exploration. Here goes:

The main source is a collection of the Russian magazine "Air war". I suggest you bookmark this Google-translated index page for future exploration (original page here). Note the large number of issues, each dealing with a specific aircraft, and sometimes several issues for one aircraft; each of them as detailed and rich as the one for the Po-2 we are going into now.

The Po-2 (or U-2 as the original Russian designation was) is treated in "Air War" no. 135 (cover page and three other colour profile pages printed on the back & insides of the cover are attached as illustrations below; the original resolution is higher).

I suggest you use this Google-translated page as a starter, since it will give you immediate access to translated versions of all the text reference pages: History, Engines used, Modifications, Action stories, and Technical description. I leave that for your own exploration.

The two truly invaluable sections are:

The photo section: This will give you 50 pages (sic!) of photos, with multiple photos on each page. A large variety of Po-2 versions are depicted, as well as walk-around photos of details. At the bottom of this page you will find the colour-profile cover pages illustrated below. These are the high-resolution versions you should use.

The drawings section: This is the link supplied by Charlie, and it is absolutely wonderful. The three-view is much better than the one I tried to make up, and I'll have to go to work on this one as well. The number of detailed sketches of the structure will make you drool, if you haven't already been there.

For now, I attach an illustration of just one page depicting all the different version of the Po-2. Note all the various versions with enclosed cabins, several of them for ambulance duty. Note also the special "containers" for carrying one or two stretchers on top of, or below, the lower wings.

Thank you again, Charlie, for this source!

Leif

[cjwalas]

Wow. Incredible resource! Now I really wish I could read Russian to decipher all those photo captions! This is great stuff. Not sure why, but I'm drawn to the Winter white version with skis that's in there somewhere. I wonder if the Night Witches used white paint!?
Thank you both, Charlie and Leif, for uncovering and sharing this gold mine!
Chris

[ccoyle]

Third aircraft down on the third page of color profiles is the subject of the Kartonowa Kolekcia kit.

[CharlieC]

Originally Posted by cjwalas

I wonder if the Night Witches used white paint!?

Chris

I think they would - operating at low altitude over snow any other camo scheme wouldn't work very well.

I noticed in the Wikipedia article on the Po-2 that the North Koreans operated Po-2s in the Korean war in much the same role as the VVS did in WW2. The article made the comment that the Po-2s were difficult to shoot down even with radar equipped night fighters because the wood and fabric structure gave a weak radar return signal.

Regards,

Charlie

[Leif Ohlsson]

I went to work on the set of 3-views from the magazine Airwar. These are very good drawings, and they needed very little straightening out. I just collected all three drawings into one, and regrouped the elements to my own liking. If you need it, it's there for downloading in the downloads aviation section.

The scale is 1/16, and the download text, as well as the drawing itself, contain directions for how to rescale or view the drawing in 1/33 and 1/48.

The drawing is even bigger than the previous one, but you can always copy the parts you want and make your own set of reference drawings for building the Kartonowa Kolekcja model.

If you are satisfied with the original drawings from the magazine, a good tip is that if you change the dpi from the 72, in which they come, to 300 you get them at their stated scale, 1/48.

And if you change the dpi to 100 you get 1/16 scale. Nice, isn't it?

These changes should be done "without resampling", i.e. without resizing.
If you are unsure, look around the menues in you graphic programme a little bit. A sure sign is that this kind of change is instantaneous; no recalculation is needed. The only thing that happens is that the scale of the ruler changes.

And I should say that when compiling the drawings into one, I made further very small resize adjustment to get them to absolutely the same scale.

Leif

I attach an illustration of what the compiled drawing looks like. This illustration is very low-resolution compared to the full size, so don't use this; download the full version.

[ccoyle]

Keep up the chatter...I may have to scrounge up the necessary edge colors for this model.

[Leif Ohlsson]

So be it, Chris...

I just found out that Bestpapermodels, a cooperative effort by Czech designers Paul Bestr and Bob Navratil, have a 1/35 scale Po-2 for download purchase.



The number of parts is a quite modest 79, but so is the price (4€, 5$).

The company's Sig 33 haubits model comes recommended by Toddlea at this forum.

Leif

[cjwalas]

Leif! You keep inspiring the wrong Chris! :D
As the Best Paper model is Russian and not Polish, I had to pick it up!:o
So here's a mini-review within a review!
It's a good looking kit.

Unfortunately, my A4 paper isn't very good and my printouts came out light and my camera didn't get the color right at all, so you should judge by the images on the website, not this photo.
The camo scheme is similar to the Kartonowa Koleckcja, but more brown and green, versus two green tones on the KK. (by the way, I just noticed that on one page of my KK copy, the color is off and the greens are more brownish, a definite printing error).
The coloring is a little better on the BPM version, with a light weathering that looks good. The cockpit interior is less detailed and prehaps less accurate than the KK kit. As you suggested, Leif, the BPM kit is definitely a step down in detail level and parts, but perhaps not so much as you might think. The BPM version has very few formers by comparison, and many of the parts are more complex than the KK version. For example, the basic fuselage shell is at least 5 parts for the KK kit, but only one, more complex, part in the BPM version.
Where the difference really stands out is in the details like separate control surfaces, the machine gun and, not surprisingly, the engine. There are no bombs included with the BPM version. The KK kit is definitely the better more detailed model, but this BPM kit looks like it could build up into a nice looking model as well. I think I may try this one after I get the MM FW189 done.
Chris