DML 1/48 Ta 152C-0 Kit First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

Doctor Kurt Tank was the designer of the Focke Wulf Fw 190 series and put the name Focke Wulf forever in the history books. Nevertheless, Tank was given his own design team to tackle the problem of developing a high-altitude interceptor. The resources of Focke Wulf were left to production of the existing Fw 190 line.

The task at hand was to develop an interceptor that could reach higher altitudes with a combination of greater lift and more power. To counter the effects of prolonged operations at altitude, the cockpit had to be pressurized. The result was the Ta 152H, an aircraft that bears a strong resemblance to the Fw 190D series, but was in fact a completely different aircraft. The wingspan alone was significantly greater.

The Ta 152C was the 'clipped wing' version of the Ta 152H, though in fact the wingspan of the Ta 152C was about two feet greater than the Fw 190. The Ta 152C was intended to operate at lower altitudes than the long-winged Ta 152H, so this variant was powered by the DB603LA rated at 2100 horsepower. While only one prototype was built before the end of the war, this variant of the Ta 152 would have been a formidable opponent against any propeller-driven fighter operated by the allies.

Here is another one of Trimaster's greatest kits, the Ta-152C. This kit, along with the others in the series, was way ahead of its time in terms of detail and molding technology. These Trimaster kits are still the best injection-molded Ta 152s in any scale.

The Ta 152C kit was one of the last kits produced by Trimaster before they ceased operations, and while they may have intended to produce a styrene wing for this kit, the Trimaster Ta 152C release was given a resin one-piece wing casting. If you were fortunate, the wing was usable out of the box, though I know of a few folks that had to resort to hot water to get the distortions out of their resin wings.

First of all, major kudos to DML for completing this project decades later. In this box, we have the three common sprue trees that are also used by the Ta 152H releases. What's new are the two new wing sprues that provide a replacement styrene wing, revised propeller blades, revised cowling, revised supercharger scoop, etc., that make this version different.

The kit is molded in light gray styrene and presented on five parts trees, plus a small tree containing the clear windscreen, canopy, gunsight, and light lenses. Two small frets of photo-etch are included containing seatbelts/harness, rear cockpit deck, canopy hood locks, antennas, and more.

The cockpit is next, and like the Focke Wulfs that preceded this kit, the detailing is very nice! The instrument panel is molded with nice relief to make painting easy, but the kit was released long before photo-etched instrument panels with acetate instruments.

As I recall, some of the details in the Trimaster version of this kit were actually cast in white metal, but DML recreated these parts in styrene for their subsequent releases.

Markings are included for the one aircraft known to have existed - CI+XM. The box art depicts this aircraft downing a Soviet fighter, though I don't know if this prototype had been armed as had the Ta 152H airframes that defended Berlin against a raid by Soviet Yak-9s in the last days of the war.

The instructions are nicely illustrated and clearly show the colors for all of the parts using Gunze Sangyo color numbers, though a table is included to translate those colors into generic color names. If you'd like to have an equation of Gunze numbers to standard RLM colors, go here.

This kit is currently available (as of this date) in hobby stores and online retailers. If you're not interested in building the lone prototype, have a little fun with some operational markings for a 'what-if' or Luft-46 project.