Dive Bomber Chronicles By Alex Ruchkovsky

The history of the Pe-2 Soviet dive bomber was by all means a drama, and at certain moments, even a tragedy. The plane's concept was revolutionary for the contemporary aviation industry of the Soviet Union; its design was innovative and sophisticated. The plane started its life as a high-altitude fighter which was then converted into a dive bomber but had to take up the "inborn" fighter role many times in its combat career. When designing the plane later to be named the Pe-2, V.Petlyakov was a prisoner of a special penitentiary institution for engineers ridiculously accused of treason, espionage and political unloyalness, things so common for the thirties in my country. Petlyakov was released from prison after the PB-100 prototype proved to be an outstanding aircraft, only to die in an aircrash in 1942, when flying to Moscow from the factory as a passenger in one of the planes of his own design. "Peshka", an affectionate nickname given by the pilots to the streamlined divebomber and formally denoting a pawn in chess, was produced in thousands, to a considerable extent by women and children working at wartime factories, but was also lost in thousands being piloted by young and unskilful pilots who often ignored the outstanding dive-bombing abilities of their planes and had dive brakes taken off as unnecessary. The design bureau spent all 1944 and 1945 trying to increase the power and to improve the defensive armament and many test versions were so promising, however the Peshkas that left the factory on the V-Day were engined and equipped almost the same way their predecessors were in 1943.

But if you ask anyone in Russia who has at least some basic knowledge of the VVS and Soviet aviation history, you'll probably hear that the most beautiful, most versatile, most elegant aircraft in the VVS inventory was the Pe-2.

Chapter One. 1992-1996: Pe-2 by Airfix

The Airfix kit was the only one representing the Pe-2 for many many years and in my opinion the kit was not as bad as many would tell now. It was released in the time when references for the type were extremely thin, when so many myths and misconceptions about the plane were widespread (so many people spoke of Pe-2FT and Pe-2FZ but now we know those designations were non-existent), when the series-to-series development was not studied well. Under these conditions, Airfix made a very decent kit that definitely intended to represent a late version of the Pe-2 with rounded lower engine cowlings and faired dive brakes. With more and more references showing up, the aged kit started looking inferior to new standards and at the same time became more and more of a collectors item, though Bilek seemingly goes on selling that with a new instruction and decal sheet.

I should confess I was unable to get an Airfix Pe-2 kit for myself; it was the vacuform boom in early nineties in the new-born independent Russia that saved the day; vacu copies of hundreds of Western models flooded the market and the Pe-2 reproduction was also there. At that moment (1992) I had little knowledge of the series and subtypes; what I was building was the generic Pe-2. At a later date it turned out that what I had completed was Pe-2 series 179 (thus said the caption to the photo in the Red Stars book by C.-F.Geust et al.) of 73 BAP Red Banner Baltic Fleet (KBF) Aviation, the regiment later to be 12 Guards BAP led by famous Col. V.Rakov and later by K.Usenko who had a rank of Major at an age of 24. My main reference was the Modelist-Konstruktor magazine that provided excellent 1/72 scale drawings and cutouts showing interior of cockpits, nacelles with wheel wells and bomb bays, landing gear and armament sketches, instrument panels and what not. It was not until 1998 or 1999 when I noticed those drawings were a bit underscaled; some more on that later.

What was not good about the Airfix concept was that the fuselage was oval in cross section, instead of being circular. That spoiled the view just a little. As always with vacu modelling, all small things were scatchbuilt so I cannot comment on the quality of any minor parts of the Airfix kit, but the main airframe details looked reasonably accurate.

My first Pe-2 kit was born twice. It died in a shelf crash but was carefully restored from absolute ruins and repainted to the same winter scheme. At that time I rebuilt the landing gear and many other small details and tried my hand to show extensive weathering of the winter whitewash, with summer green camo showing up here and there.

What I did not know at that moment was that Calle Geust and company are not gods either; the Pe-2 I was modelling was in fact of series 110 and should have been shown with M-105RA engines that had entirely different cowlings. Mine was built to the later version… The photo of the nose of that "red 15" was published in the Armada book in 1999. If my model suffers another crash I'll rebuild it again with correct engines.

Chapter Two. 1999-2000: Pe-2 by Zvezda/Italeri

One of Zvezda's early and, to me, very successful efforts, the Pe-2 kit has a number of virtues that cannot be underestimated. First and foremost, the kit is very accurate in dimensions and, furthermore, designers definitely succeeded in catching the elegant lines and general outlook of the dive bomber. The assembled model does look right from all angles. The guy who made a master model definitely has a sharp eye and a good hand!

What you get in the box was meant to be Pe-2 series 205 configuration with aerodynamic improvements made in 1943 to enhance performance of the VVS workhorse. Improvements included redesigned oil cooler cowlings, new carburettor intakes, better attachment of the VUB-1 turret to the main canopy and therefore the aerial mast moved forward onto the windscreen. This series had M-105PF engines with VISh-61 propellors. (Sadly, the cowlings, spinners and props are a serious problem of the Zvezda kit.) I decided to go for a bit later aircraft, of Series 211 with new bomb racks and faired dive brakes, otherwise quite similar to Series 205.

It took me long before I started this kit; in fact I had been waiting for another Pe-2 kit that was long promised by VES Models and was said to deprive Zvezda/ Italeri of a slightest chance to be better in any respect. When I finally got a Zlinek kit which in fact originates from VES I decided to build both one after another.

When starting this kit, I already knew that the Modelist Konstruktor drawings are a bit undersized. For a very long time I had my own small obsession that the spinners are way too small on the Zvezda model. In reality, it should have been the same size and shape as the one from say the Yak-9 that had the same engine and prop. Study of photos and some measurement research prompted I was right. So the first thing I did was checking all scale plans I had and zooming them up to the scale length of Pe-2 series 205 and similar - 12525 mm long, 17116 mm wide. A short note on the way I found this data. Different sources will tell you the Pe-2 was 12600 mm long, however after you have a first round reading the Pe-2 literature you'll note all planes could not have been of the same length: early versions had a long tail cone. So I looked for sources that should be very accurate about those lengths, and here we go, the Finns who were using a bunch of early Pe-2s throughout the Continuation War (1941-1944) mention 12660 mm for a long Pe-2. The wartime documentary "Pe-2 aircraft" movie dated 1944 which is now available in Russia on videotapes as a part of the "Soviet Aircraft" collection of short films, gives the length for a Pe-2 series 110 with a short til cone, and it is 12525 mm. So I guess the most commonly used "12600 mm" is just an average between the two figures I found. The wing span is given close in all sources, 17100 to 17200, and the above mentioned wartime movie said 17116 mm and I decided to stick to that one.

Rather than telling the story of how I built the model step-by-step, I would concentrate on the things I found out that have to be corrected to improve the model's look. Despite all of these, I insist the Zvezda kit is the recommended platform to build any version of the Pe-2; you would probably agree with me the moment you put together two fuselage halves and dry fit the wings.

1. Fans of ideal dimensions and exact scales might want to make the fuselage some 2 mm shorter. I chose to cut it out between the rear wing root fairing and the gunner's oval side window thus moving the window to the wing fairing as it should be. The same action also ensures the tail wheel bay is in place. Another thing to correct are a bit short rear parts of each engine nacelle which is easy to fix by gluing in pieces of plastic and giving them the right shape with knife, file and sandpaper.
2. The main canopy glazing: its side windows are not shown correctly, there should be a frame of three windows not two, and this is easy to check on actually any Pe-2 picture. You might want to cut out the side windows from the main canopy and to replace them with pieces of transparent plastic and to show three windows according to photos and drawings. Or you can sand down the unwanted panels and to repolish the piece and to add the lines where necessary. What I did was replacing the canopy with a spare vacu cockpit I had from a MAVI vacform kit produced in Russia in early nineties. But even with that one, I had to cut out the windscreen windows and replace them with self-made transparencies to show the correct angle of the windscreen's leading edge. Folks this is vital: the shape and angles of canopy elements play a most important role in making your model look like the Pe-2.
3. The VUB-1 turret glazing: if you leave the one given in the kit you'll see it looks too low. Those who know how to press out canopies will not find it difficult to make a turret glazing mold and to press out a bit higher turret glazing. I took one from the Zlinek kit though it wanted to be repolished and to have its top side flattened to get an appropirate shape.
4. Louvres on the wing upper surface should actually be turned around, the way they originally sit would not ensure any air flow at all. I cut them out and imitated them by pieces of thin curved plastic sheet cemented together. One may wish just to rescibe the louvres as they are thick enough to make it look just right. The problem of wing radiators is not that simple. The way from the leading edge to the radiator was a tunnel and you have to think about the way to represent it. One suggestion might be to drill out appropriate tunnels in a piece of thick plastic, then to cut out big openings in the leading edges and to glue in the plastic pieces with tunnels. Afterwards the plastic has to be trimmed round the leading edged, sanded, filled and polished if and where necessary.
5. The biggest challenge is the shape of cowlings. Neither a recent book by Armada nor older references will offer good drawings of the Pe-2 cowlings and therefore I recommend watching the photos. Zvezda's cowlings are one-piece details and need to have their sharp angles of upper cowl panels rounded. Watch the photos carefully while you do it - the optical impression is the only criterion I could suggest. You will also have to round the cowl fairing on the wing behind the engine to match the shape of the engine cowling. Here is a couple of photos I made in the Polish Army Museum in Warsaw.

6. The oil cooler intakes need some special treatment. On the photos, you'll see the cowling's bottom line go up and the front opening is not like given on the piece in the kit. As the coolers themselves have to be added anyway I spent a lot of time rounding them and then added the cooler and the tunnel. Unfortunately, the drawing stuff will not help much again and you have to rely on photos.
7. Spinners and props. The spinners in the kit are more or less fine for early Pe-2 series with the M-105RA engine but no good for the ones we see on PF-engined aircraft. I made new spinners which are much more rounded and of slightly bigger diameter. You can try to use use spinners from any models of Yak fighters with M-105PF engines. Make sure you trim them to catch the smooth joining of spinner and cowling outlines. Zvezda gives six separate propellor blades done well to represent VISh-105SV with broader blades which was there starting from series 246. If you want to get exactly Series 205 and later configuration you have to make new props or get suitable replacements to represent VISh-61. For instance, props from LaGG-3 kits by Toko can be considered.
8. Cut out an opening for the ventral Berezin gun in the corresponding transparent part. Make sure you paint it over when you paint your model: a transparent hatch had been deleted by that time. You will have to add the ventral gun yourself as the kit does not contain it. I used the one given in the kit and picked an UB gun from the NeOmega resin set for the VUB-1 turret. The ShKAS gun has to be added to one of the small windows in the gunner's cockpit, and the barrel of another ShKAS gun has to be added to the left side of the nose.
9. Interior detail is so scarce that you have to reproduce that yourself practically anywhere and one might think Zvezda knew that NeOmega will come up with a resin set to make it look full of incredibly well done details. In the nose, I only added the ShKAS gun. In the pilot's cockpit, I added the gun sight and the belt from the ammo box to the Berezin gun. In the rear cockpit, I added the wires and equipment seen well through the side windows.
   However, the area you have to work hard yourselves anyway are the wheel wells. There, you'll have to represent the cupola where a part of the well was rested when wheels were up, and the sidewall ribbing. Main gear construction will also require at least serious amendments - both to represent the complexity of struts and to give your model the right sit. I practically rebuilt the langing gear units from scratch and only used the main frame from the kit, the rest of frames and struts made from wires, heated sprue and plastic sheet.
10. Most of exterior detail (different bulges on nacelles, holes, chutes, bomb sight opening, hatches etc.) have to be added though some few are already there on the model. And don't forget to rescribe the panel lines, the ones on the kit are raised and incomplete.

The kit contains 2 FAB-500 and 2 FAB-250 bombs for external loading, all molded finely. The bomb racks are not too bad. Please note the Pe-2 could only lift 1,000 kg of bombs so putting all four bombs on your model will make it unrealistic.

I finished my kit in a three color camo standard for 1943, green, brown and grey on upper sides and blue undersides. The colors were prepared by myself mixing different Humbrol and Revell enamels, the only brands reliably available here in Latvia these days. The model represents a Pe-2 "yellow 29" flown Col.I.E.Korzunov of 40 BAP Black Sea Fleet Aviation, which I figure out to be something between series 211 and 350. The plane wears the regiment's traditional white identification stripes on upper wings and the Order of Red Banner on the nose. The stars and the nose decoration came from the Travers Pe-2/Il-4 decal sheet, the yellow numbers from Zlinek's Pe-2 kit, rest of markings airbrushed.

Chapter Three. 1999-2000: Pe-2 by Zlinek

Meant to be of a new generation of plastic kits with recessed panel lines, rivets, super detailed cockpits and wheel wells, this kit fell victim to enormous delays in production. Developed on thin references, the kit, regrettably, suffers a couple serious problems that, in my humble opinion, prevent that from beating the Italeri kit. Actually, the major problem of that model is that it was built right after the ill-fated Modelist Konstruktor drawings that happen to be underscaled. So the kit is somewhere around 1/75 which is a shame. I should confess right away that I did try to fix the basic dimensions by making inserts and replacing the tail cone when converting the model to an earlier version; I enlarged the nacelles and replaced the tail fins but what I did not even try was to "inflate" the fuselage which is shrunk in section and it definitely shows when both Italeri and Zlinek kits stand near each other.

Although the instruction sheet suggests the model represents Pe-2 series 205, the research of Pe-2 references prompt that the kit presents Pe-2 series 110 configuration. This denotes production year 1942, M-105RA engines with VISH-61B propellors, VUB-1 turret, reduced nose glazing, rear position of aerial mast. The model features the shortened tail cone typical for that production period.

The scale problem left aside, an overall quality of the kit is amazing though Hasegawa addicts would possibly not be happy with smaller details being not too crisp. The black plastic the kit is made of is soft and nice to handle. The quality of surface details exceeded my expectations. Panel lines are recessed, thin and subtle enough, riveting is all there and looking really good, undercarriage and wheel bay details are decent which is a surprise. The amount of interior detail is very substantial and extremely well done; again, tiny details like gun barrels could have been a bit crisper, but it is compensated by the unbelievable number of elements you have to find on sprue and put on the walls, into cockpits and elsewhere, including the radio, junction boxes, chairs, floor structure, complicated ventral gun assembly, ammo boxes with feeds etc. etc. Those who like lowered flaps and opened hatches have reasons to celebrate as suberbly done separate flaps and main entry hatch details are available.

The instruction sheet leads you through putting all those parts together and is quite clear and easy to understand. It even prompts the dihedral value for the stabilizer and the diameters of rods and struts to be added into the rear cockpit and u/c construction respectively. Strangely enough, it only gives three camouflage schemes of over 10 options included into the the decal sheet. The decal offers several very nice subjects, including two well known aircraft of 40 BAP, Black Sea Fleet, #5 "Za Borisa Safonova" and #29 flown by Col.Korzunov, this one I used for my Italeri kit; #3 "Vpered na zapad"; "K" of 140 BAP; "Yellow Lion" of 99 ORAP; postwar Czech and Polish and Yugoslav AF bombers, and some more related to the Pe-3 boxing of this kit. The problem is that almost all those options pertain to late Pe-2 versions, series 205 onwards, and some serious conversion work is required to make it historically correct, the work I honestly do not think is even worth starting once the Italeri offering is available. The decal looks very glossy but "yellow 29" looked fine on my Italeri model.

Wishing to make something different from what I achieved with Italeri, I decided to build a very early Pe-2 in Finnish markings. I decided to build the PE-211, the war survivor that logged the longest flying time among all the Pe-2s used by the Finns. I will not concentrate on the Finnish modifications to the plane since this is a VVS website after all. Three most essential things to accomplish were the following ones,

1. Heavy rebuild of the nose. Extensive glazing and a long main canopy had to be accomplished. I used yet another item borrowed from MAVI vacform kits, this time from their Pe-3 issue that included a long canopy. Cut in several pieces and trimmed a bit, it represented the long canopy quite well. Though again I had to cut out the windscreen windows and insert new ones retaining a correct angle between them. I also cut out the nose window openings one by one and inserted transparent plastic in each of the openings. The lower window was also scratchbuilt.
2. Serious improvement of engines and nacelles. The way they are, the engines look just tiny so I enlarged them by making inserts in both axes. I also built up the nacelle sidewalls to make those higher. I used the spinners from Zvezda and just added a couple of mm to the length of Zlinek prop blade roots to get their correct length. Giving it all the final touch, I sanded the upper cowling to give it a specific downthrust and added the shafts looking out of spinners. I also scratchbuilt both oil radiators and corected the shape of their front openings a little bit.
3. An attempt was made to get the correct dimensions by making inserts in the wing root and wing tip area as well as fitting a longer tailcone taken from the MAVI vacform Pe-2. I tried to be as cautious with filling and sanding as I could to save the superb surface detail and I did not ruin much of it. In my opinion, the said increase in overall dimensions does improve the model to a certain extent, especially if you put it on your shelf just next to Zvezda's Pe-2 as I did.

The rest of work was less challenging. Step by step, I modified the model to Series 18 standard, scratchbuilt the TSS-1 upper turret with the ShKAS gun, ammo belt and chute, made early-type round-shape small side windows in the radioman's cockpit, added two more tiny windows in the tail part of the fuselage's spine, modified the rear cockpit to match the way it should look on early a/c.

I painted the plane in standard Finnish colors, black segments on top of olive green and greyish blue undersides. Toned down insignias and all codes were taken from the Finnish-made InScale72 decal sheet devoted to Pe-2 and Pe-3 in the Finnish AF. The outstanding instruction sheet by Pentti Manninen helped a lot and, generally, the Finnish contribution to research of the early Pe-2 is enormous. My special thanks go to Kari Lumppio who always helps me so much with all my Finnish projects.

As a conclusion, I should say that the Zlinek kit is a fine effort and real VVS addicts will find it attractive enough to get one for their collection. Representation of early-type engines is one of the strongest reasons why you should get yourself this kit, at least until someone comes up with a quality aftermarket item.

A trio of Petlyakov bombers are on my shelf now. Tired of this theme, you think? No, I am not. The Pe-3 will be started next in a not-too-distant future, and someday later when we hopefully have some interesting photo evidence of Pe-2M-82 I'll make it as well.