The Gotha Go-242 was a World War II Luftwaffe Transport Glider. Typically towed by another aircraft into combat, the glider would release, land, and then deploy its cargo of men and material. It was used in France, Africa, and the Eastern Front for the German Army. There were different variants designed which featured different landing gear configuration as well as one that had engines. ICM has produced these different versions as well in the following kits. (48224 Go-244B and 48226 Go-242A)

The kit consists of 13 solid plastic sprues, 1 clear sprue and a decal sheet for two markings of aircraft. Assembly begins with the construction of the interior and I found this to be the most tedious part of the build. The interior consists of a thin frame construction, just like the real thing. Great care must be taken in removing these parts from the sprues and then cleaned up as they are fragile. During this part of the assembly the frame skeleton needs to be square and aligned correctly in order to fit properly when applying the exterior fuselage parts. Take lots of extra time dry fitting the exterior fuselage pieces to this frame as it will help you in not having to deal with edge seams. The interior troop seats were slightly troublesome as the seat frames had to line up correctly with their location with the interior framing, floor and then with the interior of the fuselage. When this is completed, it looks very nice and realistic.

Now that the interior framing is completed, painted, and detailed I moved on to adding the fuselage parts to the interior skeleton framing. Surprisingly they went together quite well but it did take some dry fitting around the interior frame and sanding here and there to make it square up just right. The end result was very little seam cleaning on the joining of the exterior parts. (On a side note, I forgot to add nose weight at this point. I do believe ICM has included a note to do so in their subsequent instructions of the kit. I believe it is about 20g of weight that is required.)

The next step was the assembly of the wings and the twin boom tails. There was a little work in the joining of the twin booms to the wing assembly with minimal putty and sanding needed. The construction is pretty straightforward and like most of the ICM releases the moving surfaces are all molded separately so you can position them any way you desire. Great care is needed once all the aileron, flap, and rudder counterbalances have been added as I lost two somewhere along the building process. You also have the option of building the rear cargo hatch in the open position showing the interior troop seats. There is a lot of potential to make this into a diorama.

ICM gives you two markings to choose from. Option 1 is described as Schleppgruppe 4, 1943 and Option 2 is in Germany, 1942. They both have the Eastern Front yellow markings so I would assume that is where they were utilized. I used Eduard canopy masks and the their cockpit SPACE set which provided seat belts and 3D printed instrument panels. I painted the kit with Model Master paints and did my best with Tamiya tape in replicating the camouflage pattern. For the mottled camouflage on the sides, I used a Badger Velocity airbrush.

Thanks to ICM for the review sample and producing out of the ordinary subjects in 1/48^th scale! I’d also like to thank the IPMS Reviewer Corps is providing me the opportunity in doing this review.