The Little World

Corrugated aluminium, actually. Hugo Junkers’ favourite material. He built a lot of things out of it – I suspect that it featured in water heaters, aircraft, and possibly underwear. The twenties roared in Dessau…

This example of a Junkers all-metal airliner caught my eye on the Revell shelf. Then research showed it to be a type that was exported to North America so the interest grew. When I discovered an example of it flew ( and crashed ) in a town that I had visited, the die was cast – I had to have it.

Oddly enough, the hobby shop selling it marked on their docket that it was supplied as a discount of $ 1.00 – yet the credit card receipt was for the full price. Whatever – it proved to be a real buy as the kit included the extra parts to make a float plane out of it – as it had been in British Columbia.

Decent sprue trees – a little flash around the float struts, but nothing at all on the wing or fuselage – and these are the critical parts with the corrugations. They are daunting to begin with and you have to keep your gluey fingers off them if you’re going to have any chance of preserving their distinctive surface.

It’s a very wide wing compared to the length of the fuselage and, like Hugo’s original, should be totally self supporting once the periphery is cemented. The fuselage is three pieces to avoid a top centre seam.

The floats are four-piece – a little fussy to assemble but the edges should be square once they are together. Trap for young players; they almost look back-to-front.

The clear parts are rudimentary but will be easy to assemble. I’ve not captured the instructions as they are typical Revell overkill. The decals look nice but anyone attempting to conform them to the corrugations is asking for misery. I intend to airbrush civil markings on.

A note about the real aircraft – it still exists as a crumpled wreck in a museum – it hit two downdrafts trying to take off from a lake and wiped itself off in the trees. No fatalities, thankfully.