HK Dornier Do335B-6 night fighter

[Chippyminton]

Hello folks, and greetings from Derbyshire.

 

My first-ever build thread - and I’m nervous ……

 

Since taking up modelling again just a coupla years ago after a 50-year hiatus, I still consider myself to be planted firmly at the lower end of the re-learning curve.  Since I’m principally a diorama builder – this is where all of my LSP’s eventually find a home.

 

Whilst my aircraft (this is my 9^th one so far) and other hardware are well-detailed and predominantly accurate, I don’t feel the need to obsess over microscopic details which take forever to do -  but which are then rendered invisible within the context of models which, in some cases, are over 4’/1200mm long with a heck of a lot going on (check out my ‘V-2 railhead’ thread in the ‘Non-LSP Works’ section of the forum and you’ll get the picture).

 

So with the exception of the most important AM additions such as seatbelts, cockpit instrument panels, resin engine exhausts etc. – all of my models are OOB builds using mostly OOB decals and paintjobs. They'll never win any competitions - but for me, that's not the point. The point is that I'm having an absolute blast building them and I'm so, so enjoying becoming re-engaged in this wonderful hobby. Having so far cut my teeth on relatively simple single-engined Luftwaffe fighters - I now felt tentatively confident enough to tackle my first ‘big boy’s kit’. HK’s Do335 – in this case, the ‘what-if’ B-6 night fighter version.

 

The first thing which hit me right out of the box was the substantial amount of plumbing and wiring which was moulded onto some of the components. I headed down my usual route of spraying the components entirely in the principal pipework colour (in this case AK Xtreme Metal lacquer-based aluminium), followed by infilling the surrounding panels with several thin coats of Vallejo RLM66 diluted with water containing a tiny amount of dishwashing liquid to kill the surface tension.  This helps the paint flow nicely up to the moulded details by capillary action, giving clean, sharp lines. Pleasing;

 

 

 

 

Herr Dornier then decided to spoil my day by annoyingly positioning a fuel tank to hide what I’d just done;

 

 

 

 

He did graciously allow some of it remain visible, however – this will become part of the wheel well;

 

 

 

 

As is usually the case – the build started with the powerplants and the pilot’s office. The cockpit went together nicely, and incorporated Quinta’s exquisite interior set. As is usually the case, the fit of their components over the kit’s filed-off moulded items was flawless. The pilot’s dashboard and remaining instrumentation will come later;

 

 

 

 

There’s also a second cockpit for the radar operator;

 

 

 

 

The large gap in front of his seat is where the FuG218 apparatus locates. This actually hangs from a bracket mounted on the ceiling of the fuselage, but I’ve loosely placed it just for this photo pose;

 

 

 

 

Sitting in the centre of this sub-assembly is the main support spar for the wings. It sits between two bulkheads, but it’s attached onto ultra-thin sections and spaced away from each bulkhead by two tiny moulded pins. I was (perhaps unnecessarily) concerned about how strong this would be – so I injected 5-minute epoxy into the resulting front-and-back gaps to strengthen the whole thing;

 

 

 

 

HK have done a great job on the beefy DB603’s. In terms of detail, these are right up there with Zoukei-Mura’s Jumo 213 sitting in the Ta152H-1 which I completed a few months back – and of course there are two of these on a 335;

 

 

 

 

The front engine block is entirely filled with one of two beautifully-cast (and surprisingly heavy) whitemetal weights, with the second one sitting close behind it, hidden inside the MK103 mounting bay. These are important additions for an aircraft with a tricycle undercarriage to avoid tail-sitting, and they’ve been very well thought-out;

 

 

 

 

 

 

The front engine mounts to the bulkhead/firewall using the familiar Y-shaped yoke;

 

 

 

 

The rear one uses a single arm to support the centre of the engine, but with the front end fixed to a chunky bracket which would presumably have been bolted to a strongpoint on the floorpan;

 

 

 

 

I’d normally mount the exhausts at this stage – but the ones in the kit aren’t the best. There’s no slide-moulding going on here, so the port ends are almost completely closed up. I have a set of Brassin replacements on the way.

 

The kit instructions call out for some internal areas and components to be painted in RLM66 and others in RLM02. By this time, most internals would have been bare metal (which indeed the rest of the opening panels are) - but the 66/02 contrasts were pleasing, so I just went with it.

This whole internal sub-assembly’s now done;

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next up is attempting to install all of this into the 3-part fuselage. Even the hugely respected Brett Green described this as ‘challenging’, and I’ve watched several YouTube build videos where folks have really struggled with this – including one pro modeller tearing his hair out whilst building this aircraft for a client.  So here was the relative rookie about to launch into this ‘challenging’ section ……

 

What could possibly go wrong?

 

See you soon, folks … 

 

Kev

 

 

Edited July 4 by Chippyminton

[Kagemusha]

Nice start Kev.

[monthebiff]

Absolutely top notch indeed!

 

Regards. Andy

 

 

[Out2gtcha]

Very nice start!

 

The engines look terrific. I personally loved this kit. It was a fun build IMHO.

 

Looking forward to more!

[scvrobeson]

This looks really nice! Great start on the interior and engines.

 

 

Matt 

[Chippyminton]

Thankyou for the kind words and the encouragement guys - it's greatly appreciated. The thing I'm having so much difficulty in coming to terms with, is how brutally revealing these harshly-lit cellphone closeups are 🫢 But that's a good thing. I've revisited some areas this morning and and corrected a few things which I hadn't spotted .... the pilot's right-hand seatbelt had broken away from its seat mounting, various areas of scruffy paintwork needed fixing etc. But in the flesh, it looks perfectly fine from a foot away (very nice actually, I'm proud of it) - which ties in with what I said in the OP about 'the big picture'.

 

But just to be sure - all future photos will be be taken from the far side of the room, showing a tiny dot in the panorama ('this is the finished plane, folks') and submitted in mega-low resolution. Fixed 😀

 

Thanks again - you're the best.

 

Kev 

[Hubert Boillot]

Nice start. And nice tip on painting the background colour around the pipes.

 

Hubert

[Chippyminton]

Episode 2 - it’s time to the encase the cockpits/powerplants sub-assembly in the fuselage. It comes in three parts;

 

 

* Draws breath …… *

 

The kit’s been designed in such a way that the port fuselage side provides the great majority of the fixings and the location points – but there are about 10 of these where it needs to be correct = both cockpits, all the bulkheads, wing spar, gun bay, rear engine floorpan, locating pins, flanges - all sorts. But of course as soon as this fuselage half is offered up to the sub-assembly, you can’t see most of them ......

 

I won’t stink out the thread with tales of woe and abject misery – but getting this port side to sit snugly against all of the contact points was a world of pain, filing, drilling and scraping (accompanied by vast outpourings of malodorous language) ……. and I knew from reviews and build videos that unless the two main fuselage halves were correct – the top section wouldn’t fit  💀  But eventually - it snapped perfectly into place;

 

 

At this point, I’d normally have removed it again to paint the visible interior sections of the fuselage, but having spent a couple of hours finally bludgeoning it into place – there was no way I was taking it off again. Everything was tight, dead-straight - and I wasn’t about to push my luck. The Extra Thin bottle was a blur as it headed towards its impending task at stratospheric speed ..... 😀

 

The two remaining bulkheads were then added to the fuselage rear, along with the driveshaft for the pusher prop;

 

 

The starboard side was way, way easier – it fixes directly to the well-anchored port side with only minimum additional location points, and it slotted right into place inside 10 minutes, requiring little more than opening up the rectangular wing spar hole which was a crazy-tight fit;

 

 

The joints were well-aligned, with the only misbehaving area being a minor section on the belly near the wheel well (as per every other reviewer's build I read - it's a near-constant). But a smear of putty (the only one throughout the entire build) – and no panel line to re-scribe as a bonus;

 

 

So ...... after all the effort, would this top fuselage section fight me?

 

 

No. It wouldn’t – and I’m pretty sure that the time and care invested in getting the two main halves correct was the reason.  After a small amount of scraping on the radar operator’s rear bulkhead – it slotted perfectly into place, with the only flaw being a tiny gap right in front of the tail fin;

 

 

This was fixed by gently touching in some Vallejo 74.601 primer with a 4/0 brush (just like doing a panel line pin wash). It runs along the line and fills these tiny gaps very well. A coupla applications are usually needed depending on the size of the gap. I’m not a fan of this product as a primer – but as a micro-filler it’s brilliant.  The overspill paint in the rivet holes was subsequently popped out using a pin;

 

 

Happy? You bet I was. Next came the remainder of the Quinta loveliness;

 

 

And the long MG151 barrels. The ones in the kit were badly bowed, so I replaced them with two lengths of .040” Evergreen rod with drilled-out ends;

 

 

Then – tail, wings, and control surfaces. Parts fit throughout was very good, with only tiny panel gaps appearing in a few places. Another session of capillary-action primer was all that was needed to achieve clean, seamless joints;

 

 

 

Having got the above components in place and having decided to use bare metal in the wheel wells, I also decided to remove the underbelly fuel tank, strip off the RLM02, and repaint that in bare metal, too.

 

I’m guessing that everyone here knows just how well DOT4-grade auto brake fluid works as a paint stripper? Pour a little into an old jar, drop in your component, and after just 10 minutes, it’s eating acrylic for breakfast. It's like magic happening before your eyes .....

 

 

100% safe for styrene and ABS, waterbased, no smell, cheap to buy (£8 for half a litre from Halfords for the UK guys) and it works on enamels and lacquers, too – but it takes longer. A few hours soak is usually needed for these paints, followed by a gentle scrub with an old toothbrush for stubborn crevices and similar. Once you’re done – clean the component using dish soap & water to remove the residual greasiness.

 

So the 335's pretty much done and ready for masking and the paintshop. Since it’s going to be an ‘every possible panel open’ model with lots of fragile bits sticking out everywhere, I find it easier and safer to paint all of these items separately and fix them on after the main airframe’s been done. A shout-out to HK for the perfect interior faces of these multiple panels btw – these are often peppered with ejector pin marks (Revell - I’m looking you and your ‘Swiss Cheese’ Fw190A-8). But this? Not a single one. Great care had to be taken to make sure that all of the panel support struts were sitting at the correct wacky angles, though;

 

 

I’ve decided that this aircraft won’t be a diorama feature. It will stand on a ‘Nachtjäger’ display base next to a forthcoming He219A-7 which has jumped straight to the front of the queue as a direct result of a fortuitious LSP Group Build theme. The Heinkel will be finished in 75/76 mottle uptop with half-black/half-76 undersides - so I wanted the Dornier to be a nice contrast. Since the B-6 is a ‘what if’ …….. it will be completed in a ‘what if’ camo scheme using late-war RLM colour shades – but a scheme which has a solid basis in historical authenticity.

 

I’ll put the finished model up in ‘Ready for Inspection’ as soon as I’ve completed it.

 

Thankyou very much for reading my deranged waffle, and thanks again to everyone for their kind words and rookie encouragement. It means a lot.

 

Kev

 

 

Edited July 13 by Chippyminton

[dutik]

On 7/4/2026 at 9:44 PM, Chippyminton said:

 

 

What could possibly go wrong?

 

See you soon, folks … 

 

Kev

 

Now this looks definitly like some kind of H.R.Giger illustration 

 

Nice build, nice cockpits! Just want to say: 

I have some photos of a real Do-335 fuel tank as well as of the 335 Zerstörer replica at Rechlin museum, but links to the LSP forum went broken when the hoster folded down.

 

Happa modelling!

- dutik

[Chippyminton]

6 hours ago, dutik said:

Now this looks definitely like some kind of H.R. Giger illustration 

 

I can't quite believe you said that. I'm a hardcore super-fan. I've visited his museum in Gruyères three times, and attended exhibitions of his work as far afield as Hamburg, Nantes, Barcelona and Stockholm. I also build large-scale 3D wall arts inspired by his work. Wood, plaster, resin, metal, plastics, fibreglass ..... everything but styrene. Apologies to the OP for hijacking the thread.

 

Oh - wait. I am the OP 😃

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited Tuesday at 04:28 PM by Chippyminton

[dutik]

I know your dark desires 

 

Very skilful and atmospheric work! Giger would have been proud! 

 

Regards

- dutik

[dutik]

Replaced the first walkaround photos of the 335 replica from Rechlin. Also the original fuel tank.

 

Enjoy!

- dutik

[Out2gtcha]

Neat!

 

I love the spine incorporation...