Cruiser Kalinin, Pacific Ocean Fleet, Soviet Naval Aviation 1947
Following on from my earlier builds of the Classic Airframes OA-10A Duck and Airfix Walrus featured in previous issues of this magazine, the Mars Models Beriev Be-4 completes the trio of 1/48 seaplanes built from my stash. I was completely unaware of this Soviet aircraft, which differs from the others by not being an amphibian, until early 2021 when I came across this kit. I duly ordered it direct from Ukraine and it arrived shortly afterwards battered but intact.
Like the Walrus and Duck, the Be-4 is a pre-war design that staggered into post-war service. I think it is an astonishingly attractive design, with a beautifully sleek fuselage overshadowed by an enormous engine. Compared to the British and American designs it looks like it’s from a different era. I love it.
I also love this kit. Opening the box was a real delight as the mouldings are numerous (264 plastic parts across 12 sprues for something smaller than a P-47!), exquisitely fine, have very smooth surface textures on the whole and absolutely no ejector pin marks. There’s also a PE fret, pre-cut masks, a small film of acetate and decals for eight aircraft. It’s not cheap, but it is complete, and the quality of the plastic puts much larger manufacturers to shame.
It’s not perfect (but then what kit is?). Some of the edges of the parts have a very fine layer texture, similar to that found on 3D printed parts. This is generally unobtrusive and given the small nature of the manufacturer, easily forgiven. The instructions are very thorough but thoroughly confusing. It took me several iterations of reading them before I understood how the different options (for there are many) relate to the different marking schemes. If you are ever unsure about what you should be doing, I suggest looking at the instructions again as the information is usually found there somewhere.
I had no references for this aircraft, so Google was my friend. There are quite a few images of the Be-4 on the internet, although all the ones I found are black and white and not the best quality. It really helps to search using Russian as you’ll get lots more results – you could try БЕРИЕВ БЕ-4 (КОР-2). This took me to a Russian publication dedicated to the Be-4 called Beriev KOR-2 (Be-4) Soviet WW2 Ship-Board Reconnaissance Flying Boat by A.N. Zablotsky and A.I. Salnikov and published as a monograph by Modelist Konstruktor magazine. I paid $4 to buy this from modelgrad.com and it came with an English translation. I found it invaluable.
This kit is for people who like sticking lots and lots of parts together, some of them very small. Mars Models have an interesting philosophy for part numbers, whereby rather than numbering each individual parts, they are numbered in groups. So there are five parts numbered ‘7’ for example, all for the gun mount, and seven part ‘122’s, all for one of the guns. You get used to it. You should also be aware that some parts are mis-numbered, and some parts are not mentioned in the instructions at all. It sounds a nightmare, but with patience, perseverance and some common sense it’s not too much of a problem.
The interior that Mar Models provide is rather complete and complex. You definitely need to study the instructions carefully and read all the way to step 8 before committing anything to glue. Really make sure you are comfortable with where everything is meant to go because it does fit together very well with location points moulded in; they’re just not always very clear. In particular, it’s critical that the floor cross members (parts 71-76) are fitted the correct way round. I messed this up and it caused me grief in fitting the seats later on.
I attached as many parts as I could to the fuselage halves and floor prior to priming with black. My aim was to get some high contrast in the finish so that some of it would remain visible on the completed model. I airbrushed some white primer from ‘above’ to generate shadows and contrast across the interior, and then airbrushed a thin coat of Mr Color 337 Grayish Blue as I didn’t have any of the required A-12 Grey to hand. This gave some pleasing colour gradients across the larger parts.
Detail painting was accomplished with acrylics from Vallejo and Lifecolor. I still need to up by brush-painting game, and my attempts at getting a worn leather finish on the seats and various pouches resulted in them looking more like wood. There are two instrument panels very nicely moulded in plastic and duplicated in PE. I elected to use the PE versions with acetate backing, which worked okay but I think I would have preferred the plastic alternatives for speed and ease of construction.
Weathering of the interior was confined to an oil wash that was then streaked in a vertical direction followed by some chipping with some shades from LifeColor’s ‘Shades of Black’ set with a sponge and fine brush. Some simple lap belts were added from a generic Eduard PE set – I don’t know why these weren’t included on the kit’s PE fret and they were the only addition to the kit.
The fit of all these parts is truly excellent and the fuselage halves closed around the complicated interior with ease. The same could not be said of the side window transparencies, which were too small. I used UV resin to plug the gaps, but the raised window frames were obliterated in the subsequent clean up. This is one of the areas of the finished model that disappoints me.
Mars Models provide very complete instructions on how to model differences in the evolution of the Be-4. One of these is the gun, and as I was modelling the later type, I needed to use later 12.7mm UBT machine gun. This is a beautiful moulding comprising seven plastic and three PE parts. The pintle is similarly well-detailed, but I made the mistake of attaching the PE mount too early and it didn’t last long during construction of the fuselage. It is much better added right at the end.
As is my wont, I glued together the main components with superglue, although for seams that would not need to be removed or be visible, I used Tamiya Extra Thin. The superglue creates extra work when sanding the joints out, but the payoff is no ghost seams. The major components were joined with no major dramas and the joints sanded down. After the somewhat tiresome job of cleaning the seams on the Airfix Walrus, this kit was a pleasure.
True to the nature of the kit, the wing was more complex than expected, with three parts for the lower side and four for the upper. Control surfaces are all separate as are the wingtip lights. The latter were actually a terrible fit and I ended up just filling them completely and restoring the lights with some UV resin at the end of the build. Make sure you drill out the holes for the rocket launchers and bomb shackles if you’re going to fit them, and note that whilst Mars Models provide for eight rockets, only four were ever actually fitted – it’s mentioned in the instructions, but hidden away.
A sturdy spar ensures the correct geometry around the centre of the wing and an initial test fit of the upper and lower wing parts was disappointing as a large gap appeared at the trailing edge. I minimised this with some judicious sanding and clamping. However, I don’t think the gap should be completely eliminated as the Be-4 had split trailing edge flaps that some photos show sat naturally slightly open. The upper portion of the nacelle was made up of two halves which fitted very accurately between the outer upper wings.
With all the major components in place I spent a good deal of time addressing the seams to ensure all joints were flush and the panel lines reinstated. Some extra work was required at the joint between the fuselage sides and the front ‘keel’ of the aircraft, and this is where some of that striated texture needed to be dealt with. There’s no secret to making the seams good, just lots of patient work with Infini sanding tools working from 400 grit up to 2500 grit.
The most complex area of the kit, and probably the weakest, is the engine cowl. The instructions are confusing here and the parts numerous. The first thing to establish is that the engine bearers (parts 27 and 28) are superfluous as they will be invisible on the finished thing. My strategy was to attach all the panels to the front of the nacelle on the wing, aside from the upper intake. The engine would then fit to the circular bulkhead and the cowl over that.
The engine itself is a mini work of art but difficult to assemble as the instructions are unclear at this point. I found some photos to help me out, but there’s still a fair amount of guesswork in what I’ve done. I drilled out some holes for the PE wiring harness to fit into, and I forgot to anneal the latter, which made installing it harder than it should be. I did make sure to follow the advice in the instructions to sand down the tops of the cylinder heads; an Infini glass file made short work of this. The exhausts are complicated and can be attached to the back of the engine. I did not bother painting the exhaust ring as it’s practically invisible.
Then came the tricky bit: adding the engine and cowl to the nacelle. I made a mistake here and found that there was about a 1mm gap between the rear of the top intake and the nacelle. I used force and Tamiya Extra thin to close the gap and glue it all together. Later I would realise that this introduced a slant to the front of the cowl as it wasn’t quite square to the nacelle. It would have been much better to leave the gap and fill it. I’m not sure why the cowl seated so badly on the nacelle; were I to make this kit again I would probably try moving the engine bulkhead (part 41) further aft by a millimetre or so.
With the cowl and engine attached there was a bit of a mess to clean up. I used Ammo of Mig Black CA mixed with some VMS CA filling powder to tidy up the joints as it scribes quite well. Once covered in a coat of primer I was pretty pleased with the result.
Unlike the side windows, the main front and rear transparencies fitted exceptionally well with some Tamiya Extra Thin. The transition of the windscreen into the nose was a little more abrupt than I wanted, so I filled it with many, many repeated applications of Mr Surfacer 500 until it could be sanded to a smooth join. Unfortunately, a few stress cracks appeared. These are one of the few things in modelling that cannot be fixed.
Although the kits comes with masks, they are vinyl, and I am suspicious of these because in my experience they lift over time. I wanted something more dependable, so scanned them into my computer and copied them so I could cut them from Tamiya masking sheet on my Silhouette cutter. This worked quite well, but the vinyl masks would probably have been fine.
At this stage I had a complete fuselage and wing. I needed a plan for how this was going to be painted. Were I to attach the wing prior to painting, the struts would get in the way and there is the risk of the paint ‘dusting’ around the central wing pylon due to turbulent air when airbrushing. To avoid all this, I elected to keep the wing and floats separate from the fuselage until right at the end.
That left the problem of what to do about the struts. I’ve been bitten before when thinking they would just fit at the end of the build only to find they don’t. I therefore inverted the model and dry fitted the wing. I then attached the wing struts by gluing them into the fuselage sides whilst dry-fitted into the wing. They actually fitted quite well, although there are still bigger gaps than I would like on the finished model where they meet the lower wing.
It was then to painting. For several years I’ve used the black-basing method and primed in black, but sometimes it can leave the model just looking a bit too dark. I wanted to try something different and play around with some preshading with different coloured primers. My base was Mr Primer Surfacer 1000 in grey, with some Mr Mahogany Surfacer 1000 mottled over the top and then some Mr Finishing Surfacer 1500 White over the top of that. I made extensive use of the various mottling masks I’ve acquired from Uschi van der Rosten, Artoolfx and Cat4.
I had chosen to model a Be-4 from 1947 on the cruiser Kalinin of the Pacific Ocean Fleet. This was painted in AMT-11 Grey and AMT-10 ‘Colour of the Sea’ on the upper surfaces, with AMT-7 Blue lower surfaces. The markings are nice and simple with five Soviet stars and ’02’ numerals in white. Unfortunately references for the colour scheme are sparse and the upper wing surfaces are completely speculative.
My preferred paints for Russian aircraft are the Akan range of lacquers, although they are difficult to come by and I had to purchase them from Finland. I bought the ‘Naval Aviation of the USSR’ set, which sadly didn’t include AMT-11, but did include the red for the trim tabs. These paints are beautiful and thinned with Mr Leveling Thinners gave exactly the sort of translucent finish I was looking for to allow the preshade to show through.
I used MRP for the AMT-11, but also bought AK Real Colors interpretation. They are very different, being similar in tone but the AKRC shade is much, much darker; I preferred the MRP version.
The camouflage scheme is applied freehand and in thin layers – I also thinned the MRP paint with Mr Leveling Thinners so I could control the contrast even more. The nose is MRP RAF Marking Yellow, and was airbrushed over a dark grey that had liquid mask dabbed on it with a sponge to replicate some chipping.
I prefer to use masks rather than decals wherever possible, and the ’02’ numerals were ripe for replacement. I designed masks from a scanned copy of the decal sheet and airbrushed them with Tamiya XF-2 White. I find that these paints are much better than lacquers for masking as the edges are more resistant to chipping when the mask is removed.
In short order I had a fully painted aircraft with a lot of tonal variation in the paint I was quite happy with. The only kit decals were the five stars, which went down fine over some Mr Mark Setter, and then I was on to weathering.
I would like to get better at using oil paints, so really focused on that with this model. My preference is to use Abteilung 502 oil paints blended with their Matt Effects thinner. There are a variety of shades on the model, mainly Field Green and Starship Filth, as they seemed suitably aquatic, with other shades like Sepia, Dark Mud, Black and various greys mixed in. My method is essentially to apply the oil paint neat to areas I want to shade, and then blend it out or streak it with a dry brush.
Some finer texture was added around the cowling and front of the fuselage by flicking Liquitex inks highly thinned with Tamiya X-20A thinner. This produces a fine speckling that I rather like. Weathering was completed with a little more chipping around the nose and rear cockpit opening with a sponge and fine brush.
It then came to final assembly. The ‘undercarriage’ is very fragile, and the forks are too narrow to get the wheels in. I trimmed the locating lugs, but then had to clamp the forks around the hubs to get the wheels to join. I wish I had bulged the tyres – my plan was to do it at the end by dragging the model across a flat sheet of sandpaper, but it turned out to be just too fragile for that.
The floats were attached to the wing, again with the assistance of the engineers square, and then the wing to the fuselage. This does fit exceptionally well and I was grateful that no clean up was required, as access and repair to the paint would be very challenging. The prop (eight parts!) was popped on the front after reaming out the locating hole to accept the peg.
The final step was to attach the aerial wire. This is very hard to pick out in photos, and certainly some Be-4s had another wire that attached to the main one down to the rear compartment. I could not figure out how this worked and decided to make life easier for myself by ignoring it.
I loved this kit. It’s difficult, complicated and confusing, but is essentially well-produced, complete and charming. You’d better like sticking bazillions of pieces together and dealing with seams if you want to enjoy making this kit. I do and so I did. I can’t wait to make the Mars Models 1/48 La-15 I have sat in the loft.
Year bought: 2021 (Mars Models)
Year built: 2022 (New Addington, Croydon)
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