The Book of Armaments
After determined searching and a bit of retail, some more Dornier Do217 books arrived. One in German, two in Polish, but with lots of pictures and diagrams (fortunately for some of us).
What started out as “a couple of books off eBay for some pictures” turned into a Holy Grail-like obsessive quest for the definitive Do217 reference. Spoiler alert: there isn’t one – yet.
The Kagero Dornier Do217 collection (of two)
From the old days, I sort of remembered Kagero books as being useful, and thought there might be a Do217 book in their range. A quick hunt around on Abebooks revealed that there are two, both quite hard to find and a bit expensive. Copies of both eventually turned up on eBay. I had an idea that two Dornier Do217 books in Polish might be one too many. Or even, to quote Harmonica in ‘Once upon a time in the West’, two too many.
But with no way of working out which was better, I bought both. And it turns out that each has its plus points.
The ‘Air Show’ book (D. Majsak & Z. Krzysiak, 1996, 40pp) is in Polish with English captions. Limited text, but it does have a couple of pages on the available kits (in 1996). Pre-Monogram/Revell and definitely pre-ICM, so that’s the Airfix & Italeri 1:72 kits plus the Koster 1:48 vacform.
I was curious about the kit section – not knowing any Polish, I investigated free OCR software and it all seemed a bit dubious. Copy typing Polish words into Google Translate got very boring very quickly, and for some mysterious reason crashed Firefox. Which was even more boring. None of the words stuck – in a past life there was a time when knowing the Polish for ‘fuselage’ could have been useful, but not so much now.
So I looked around again, tried Online OCR and the free version was fine for this task. OR’d the C’s perfectly well, then it was just copying & pasting the text into Google Translate. Good enough for Government work.
Apparently the Italeri fuselage is a bit narrow around the cockpit/wing root region. The authors helpfully explain the “simplest” way to get your Italeri kit accurate – insert a very narrow wedge of plastic the whole length of the fuselage behind the canopy, 2mm tapering down to zero at the tail. And some monkeying around with the turret mounting. There are other details which need fixing eg in the cockpit but they don’t mention the defensive armament. Anyway it all sounds TFD, so there was no temptation to build the Italeri Do217E kit which was hanging around.
Which by the way, does not allow you to make an E-3 without major surgery – if it’s supposed to be an E-3 why does it have a turret? The alleged E-3 in the instructions is shown as an E-2 in references e.g. the Warpaint Do217 book. And the decal sheet is labelled “E-2/E-4/E-5” so somebody knew. Basically it’s an E-5 kit, with almost enough guns to make an E-2 or E-4, except the instructions say those guns are surplus parts. And you’d need to drill your own holes to poke them through the windows.
Back to the book… there’s plenty of useful stuff about the aircraft – pull-out 1/72 plans of the E-4, K-1 and K-2. Those retro looking dive brake pictures, again. Details of the E, K , J and N series, J/N cockpit interior. Four pages of colour side views, a total of 12 a/c. Plus some multi-view colour artwork of three or four others.
This later book (Edward Kocent Zielinski, 2002), is also in Polish with English captions, has 10 more pages with a lot more content on the actual aircraft, but no kit section. Actual proper descriptions of aircraft sub-types, engines, avionics, armament etc. The pictures are a good size and it actually explains clearly what the balloon cable cutters look like. Rather than the ‘old school Haynes manual’ approach in other books: “you can see the cable cutters in this smudgy B/W photo”. Perfectly true, but not very helpful. The cable cutters are like shallow blades along the fuselage sides below the canopy, also across the front of the nose transparency. And not very obvious at first – could easily be some sort of obscure aerodynamic device.
This covers prototypes, early production aircraft and all 217 variants. Lots of interior photos, many of the usual detail photos but printed larger to fill up the A4 pages, which is helpful. Some detail on avionics, and radar for night fighter variants. With a few Hs293 drawings to finish off. Construction/structural details of the aircraft, closeups of K model, 1/72 plans, an extra page of colour side views with three more Do217E profiles in addition to those from the ‘Air Show’ book (15 in total). But without the multi-view colour pictures. Also includes a mini catalogue with a printed RLM colour chart.
Vom Original zum Modell: Dornier Do217
The other book which took some tracking down was ‘Vom Original zum Modell: Dornier Do217’ (Karl-Heinz Regnat, 2006). Hard to find compared with others in the series, it’s an excellent reference packed with pictures and drawings.
And lots of words, in German. Which I can read a bit based on memories of O level, and occasional conversations with the nice lady who ran a German cake shop in Dénia. Possibly Panaderia Stocker, which seems to have moved some time in the past 15 years. We both learned some useful things; I found out that the German word for ‘cinnamon’ is ‘Zimt’ and Frau Stocker found out that the English word for ‘Zimt’ is cinnamon. So I could maybe struggle through a book like this slowly, with a technical dictionary or its online equivalent. Sounds great in theory, but unfortunately some of us get bored more quickly than we can read anything in German. Apart from perhaps when reading a cake menu (ein Kuchenmenü, in case you were wondering).
There is absolutely loads of material on every Do217 sub-type,. Even more extracts from Dornier tech pubs, and those dive brakes again, which do have a certain retro charm… Lots of interior photos, and pictures of airframe parts, subsystems, avionics, engines, defensive armament etc. Some slightly washed out looking colour art with pictures of completed 1/72 models.
Plus a section on models (I cheated with OCR/Google Translate again). The Monogram/Revell Do217E-5 was just out and they hadn’t had a chance to review it. Basically, the Airfix kit needs a new everything and the Italeri kit has a few flaws. Details like radios which you can scratch build from Evergreen plastic, apparently.
If you’re the obsessive type…