Gentlemen,
at the moment I am devoting my precious time to an Amodel kit of an I-16 Type 5. The scheme and scene I chose to depict was the following one:
(Source: expired ebay auction)
At first I thought, "ok, the cowling covers are a little bent. No problem, with some scratch building, this is easily representable on the model". It looks like the left engine cover (ignore the upper one) was removed at some point and later reattached in a not-so-textbook-manner, i.e. it was wedged into the opening somehow.
Later I found this photograph (besided others, very similar ones):
(Source: Armada book on the I-16)
Hmmmm, I noticed, the cover is overlapping the fuselage by about 20 centimeters and the firewall would block any attempt to squeeze the engine cover behind it. So how, by all means, they managed to get the engine cover into the opening like they did it in the first photo?? Ok I thought, maybe the thin metal sheet was quite violently bent and this is just not visible in the first photo, as it is rather blurred. Then I found the third pic:
(Source: expired ebay auction)
Ok, here we have only a marginal overlapping of the engine covers, not comparable to the 20 centimeters in the second pic. Within the dimensions of the maintenance opening on THIS particular machine, it would be no problem to attach the engine cover like it was done on the first plane. The opening is nearly of the same width as the engine cover, while on the plane in the second photo it is distinctly broader. But how can this be? And I am pretty sure that this is not an optical illusion.
Could it be that there were (at least) two variants of I-16 fuselages? One which was about 20 centimeters (ca 8 inches) longer than the other?? A difference in length, ahead of the cockpit, that was visible only when the engine covers were missing?
Ideas?
Christian