Butcher Bird - Focke Wulf's FW-190A4 - FINISHED

[Dpgsbody55]

On 9/7/2026 at 2:42 AM, Legendary Replicas said:

awesome! i´m curious to see the final result.

 

Me too.  But it's been painfully slow as one of the figurines has been driving me nuts.  But I'm winning .  I'm adding two more figurines to the display.  Hopefully all done in the next couple of days.  

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

[Dpgsbody55]

My Butcher Bird is finally on the Shelf of Done.  The model itself was completed with the last update, but as I had built it with so much of the interior open and I also had a couple of figurines from an ICM kit, and this model fits inside a Trumpeter display box (just!!), I thought I could do something a bit better than my usual final update.  So I've added two ground crew to the model and it's included pilot figurine.  The other odds and sods in this display are also from that ICM kit, Luftwaffe ground personnel.

 

The first figurine done was a guy operating a pump.  This one was fairly simple as the overalls are flat black.  The part that usually takes the time is the head and face, so for a while, I had a headless figure on the display base.  The one bit that had me a bit stumped was the fuel hose, which was a length of partially co-operative flexible tube.  If I'd thought about this before starting this project, I might have made an open fuel flap to stick the end of the hose somewhere more realistic.  But as I only decided to do this little display after the model was done, we're stuck with this.  Here he is with head attached and he's glued to the base, mostly to keep the fuel drum in place.

 

 

The next finished was the pilot, Oblt. Siegried Schnell.  I'm quite pleased with this, except for the eyes which make me think of Marty Feldman .  The rest of him was not too difficult, if rather fiddly with his dress uniform and all it's decorations.  I had to mix up a colour for his uniform, and that compares well to the picture on the instructions.  This picture is just posed and not glued down to the base.

 

 

Lastly, there's a third mechanic which gave me a bit of grief.  I mixed up another colour for his overalls using two flat colours, but he came out shiny.  So I brush painted flat varnish on him, which made no difference at all.  I did this two more times each with the same glossy result.  In the end, airbrushing flat varnish did the trick.   This one had to be glued to the base as he wouldn't stand on his own.  

 

 

Here's some views of the final display.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OK, not quite final.  I said in an earlier update that I was going to pose this with the machine gun cover open, so here's a couple more shots.

 

 

 

The model itself is an FW-190A-4 as it was when it was flown by Oberleutnant Siegfried Schnell in January 1943 when he was Staffel Kapitan of 9/JG2 based at Vannes-Meucon in France near the Bay of Biscay.  The plane was not new, having had some localised repainting before it became Schnell's plane.  At this time, he had over seventy kills to his name, all on the channel front.  During the Dieppe raids, he shot down five Spitfires in one day, making him an "Ace In a Day" for the second time.  Schnell had flown with JG2 since the beginning of the war, and in February, 1943 he was made up to Hauptmann.  Sometime in March 1943, he was transferred to command III Gruppe, JG54 which had moved back to Germany for the defense of the Reich, where he trained the pilots of that unit in high altitude interception, instead of the low level brawling they were used to in Russia.  February 1st, 1944 saw him transferred to command IV Gruppe, JG54 based near Leningrad, which was markedly different to the operations he had known before.  He had trouble adapting and was shot down and killed on 25th February 1944 while flying a Messerschmitt Bf-109G-6.  At that time, he had ninety three aerial victories to his name.  He was posthumously promoted to Major in recognition of his service.

 

That wraps up this build.  It now rests on my shelves with a cover over it, so that's one less model to deteriorate.  I just wish I could get a 1/32 Spitfire in one of these display boxes, but it's about 5mm too small to get one inside.   Now if I could do a clipped wing Spitfire, it might happen.  Maybe sometime in the future.  What the model in my immediate future is, I don't yet know.  Until then,

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

Edited September 10 by Dpgsbody55

[mattlow]

Great work Michael

 

I do like the finish. Not weathered to death as sometimes is seen.. In fact from the scale distance the photos are taken, this feels like a realistic representation.

 

Shame the fuelling was a last minute choice. Maybe it's a Luftwaffe information film scene... 'Do NOT pump the fuel until the hose is connected to the aircraft. Such action will end in tears, and a court martial'.

 

Matt

[Erwin]

Very nice result !

Well done.

[Dpgsbody55]

9 hours ago, mattlow said:

Great work Michael

 

I do like the finish. Not weathered to death as sometimes is seen.. In fact from the scale distance the photos are taken, this feels like a realistic representation.

 

Shame the fuelling was a last minute choice. Maybe it's a Luftwaffe information film scene... 'Do NOT pump the fuel until the hose is connected to the aircraft. Such action will end in tears, and a court martial'.

 

Matt

 

Thanks Matt.  I do admire those who can get a really battered look to their models and in some instances it's quite appropriate.  I just don't know how to do it.  Thankfully in this instance I don't see it as appropriate as the plane operated in a relatively benign environment.  I should try to experiment a little more, but I'm also trying to reduce the size of my stash which is mission impossible thanks to all those pesky "must have" new releases, so time and other life stuff is also a constraint.  One further thing that conspired against more weathering on this model is that the surface detail is rather sparse.  I had no detail drawings of the riveting and panel lines so that part got left out.  Besides, it's the actual building and assembly of the model that I enjoy most and I wanted to get on with that.  Which also explains the lack of planning for the fuel hose..  

 

7 hours ago, Erwin said:

Very nice result !

Well done.

 

Thanks Erwin.  It was a very enjoyable build.  The model itself is excellent, my only criticism of it is the lack of surface detail.  I think if you're doing a Russian front model, it would need to be more weathered which means spending time adding rivets and more panel lines.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael