1/48 C-47 Hugin WIP blog

[Fanster]

This project will be based around TP 79 Hugin, the first of the swedish airplanes shot down in the Catalina-affair (more info at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalina_affair).
In short, the TP 79 was a C-47 Skytrain, used for radio surveillance over the Baltic Sea and the plane was shot down over international waters by a russian MiG-15. Three days later a TP 47 Catalina was also shot down during search and rescue operations for the Hugin.

My aim with this build is to build the downed aircraft, as it sat on the bottom of the ocean when they found it in 2002.
I'm fortunate enough to live close to the Swedish air force museum, so I can actually go there and see the goal for my project in real life.

Feel free to give me hints, comments and productive critizism during this project.

[Fanster]

This is the model I'm basing the build around, allthough the project will include massive amounts of scratch-building. Box arrived smashed by the postal sevice.


Right side of the fuselage, and its transport damages.

[Fanster]

There are basically only two parts of the fuselage that are almost intact, right side and top of the cockpit.
This is what the right side fuselage looks like at the moment.
I've cut out the section that I will keep, sanded down the inside texturing (the inside mattress-insulation is gone/was never present), and started to scratchbuild the structural beams.



Started working on the top of the cockpit as well, mainly just glued it together, cut it off and started the sanding.
I kept the lower part of the window installation for now, just to keep the part somewhat more rigid, these will be removed later thou.



That is my progress so far.

[Fanster]

Testfitting the top of the cockpit/fuselage transition.

[Fanster]

Looking at the fuselage on the real plane, it looks like it has a small bend in it, and a lot of twist where the cockpit used to be, probably from the impact when it hit the water.
I try to replicate this by cutting the fuselage up in segments, shaving a bit of plastic off, and glueing it back together again. Since the joints never line up properly, theres a lot of repairing and sanding to be done, and unfortunately all the panel lines get sanded away (since I'm going to depict it on the bottom of the baltic, I suspect there will be a lot of weathering involved, i.e. no visible panel lines anyway).
At the same time, I'm sanding away the inside of the fuselage, to get it thinner/more to scale, before I punch all the holes for bullet/rust damage.
Next up will be doing more of the inside, then probably start on the impact damage on the bottom of the fuselage.