Battlefront's new DFS-230 Assault Glider!! Yea baby!! For uber-Fallschirm nut jobs like me and Brian this is just a great treat. My dreams of storming Hill 107 with Major Koch and his 15 glider mounted company of the elite Sturm regiment might come true yet!!
History
The DFS-230 was first produced in 1940. It was made of tubular steel, with canvas covering and wooden wings. It had a crew of one (pilot) and could carry up to 10 troops or 1,200 kg of equipment. It was employed as an assault glider. It was usually towed behind a JU-52 or an HE-111. Standard armament was one MG-15 or MG-34 light machinegun.
*- Information from Wikipedia and Fallschirmjager.net
The Model:
The Battlefront DFS-230 gliders are a great little kit. These guys are BFs first foray into the all plastic arena. The kit is well detailed with nice crisp panel lines. At first the scale seemed a bit off but after looking at some original pictures of the real thing you can tell the crew and troops inside were very cramped. The box set comes with 4 gliders, 4 gunners and a decal sheet. No instruction sheet was supplied but the kit is very easy to build just by using the box art. Decals are very nice, typical of BF's quality. The gunners are well cast as well.
Assembly:
As stated above, each of the 4 gliders comes in its own sprue. There are only 5 parts (not including gunner) to the kit. The main fuselage, wing, horizontal stabilizers (had to look that up!), and two support struts. The kits were put together using regular model glue. I recommend that this type of glue be used over CA glue. Assembly was straight forward with no issues other than a few molding marks that needed a little love on the main fuselage.
Painting:
This is where I ran into trouble. Not because of anything to do with the kit but just my own skill. Like the earlier M-3 Stuarts I painted I decided to mask off to get clean lines. I don't know what happened but I essentially had to paint these guys twice. The base color I used was Vallejo 823 (Luft. Camo Green). The under color is Vallejo 989 (Sky Grey). The camo green is Vallejo 896 (Extra Dark Green). Windows were painted Vallejo 962 (Flat Blue). The base coat was applied with an airbrush, masked off, and then the Vallejo 989 was sprayed.
Decals were applied and then the kits were given a 4:1:1 wash and set to dry. The gliders were then dry brushed with two successive light coats of the base colors then given a coat of flat varnish.
I really like the kits and look forward to putting together 8 or 10 more for my FJ pioneers to assault Crete or Eben Emael!!
5 out of 5 Panzerfausts!!
