1/48 Tamiya -Heinkel He-162A-2 “Salamander”

Gallery Article by Floyd S. Werner, Jr. Jan 9 2007

 

History-
The He-162 was developed in the desperate final hours of the German Reich. Originally conceived to be flown by Hitler Youth, the tiny metal and wood airplane was a handful even for the experienced pilots of JG1. From conception to first flight took just over three months, the He-162 was a bunch of compromises to get an adequate jet airplane in the air. Incorporating many innovative features such as the hunchback jet engine on the fuselage and the necessitated use of an ejection seat, the He-162 was a marvel of German engineering. The He-162 was built by unskilled slave laborers in underground factories, free from allied bombing. Equipping only one Group of JG1, there is speculation that one He-162 actually shot down a Typhoon, which resulted in the types only victory in WWII. Just as fast as it was designed it was relegated to obscurity with the end of the war.  

The kit-
Tamiya’s kit is a welcome site to those who have built the Trimaster/Dragon version. Molded in light gray plastic the main parts feature fine recessed panel lines with very few mold marks. The clear parts are cleverly engineered to allow you to cut them from the sprue without any damage to them. There is a large metal ball included to keep the aircraft from sitting on its tail. Decals are provided for three airplanes. While the decals are a little on the thick side they are still quite useable.   The features of the kit include an engine pod that is either open or closed. A separate engine is included, complete with engine stand, that can be built on the stand or in the open engine pod on top of the fuselage. Can’t decide? Don’t the engine is easily removed from one to the other. A canopy that fits so nice that it can be posed either open or closed.   

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Beginning Construction-
Unlike other kits, the Tamiya He-162 starts by building the engine stand just in case you want to display your aircraft without the engine. There is no problem with the fit or the construction of this part. It is a nice feature for diorama possibilities. I elected not to use it, but I did build it up and it was fine. 

Cockpit-
OK the cockpit is next. This is a beautiful bunch of parts. The instrument panel has a decal for the gauges. I know your saying that thing will never look good over the raised portions of the panel. WRONG! Paint the panel with a gloss black and then put the decal in place. Once you are happy with the alignment of the major instruments, add a coat of Solvaset and set it aside. You will be amazed at how nice it looks when done. All you will need to do is paint it flat and then add a little bit of Future in the gauges and the look is impressive. The rest of the cockpit goes together great. You can leave the seat out until a later time, as it is removable. I preshade my cockpit with flat black and then sprayed Model Master RLM 66. I follow this up with a dry brush of RLM 02 and some silver pencil chips. Don’t forget to add the decals throughout the cockpit and on the seat. A very nice touch. There is a clear piece to add to the wheel well cover in the cockpit, make sure you don’t paint it. I attached mine with Future. While you have this piece out don’t forget to paint the inside RLM 02. This is part of the wheel well.

Landing gear-
The landing gear is a really nice assembly. A word of caution: I recommend not attaching the landing gear legs until after painting the fuselage. The legs (Parts E4 & E5) and support springs (Part B18) can be added later without any problem. If you do add them now you will risk breaking off the landing gear door retraction strut, which are mounted on the landing gear legs. I broke both of mine. The entire wheel well is painted RLM 02, but there is a little room for either RLM 66 or aluminum struts. The struts were supposed to be the same struts used by the Bf-109 and as such could have any of the three colors. Check your references. Most appear to be RL 02 though.  

The same goes for the wheel covers, RLM 22 Black looks to be the norm but there are clear photos of the covers being unpainted magnesium.  

The part of this kit that surprised me was the landing gear doors. You have to carefully cut them off the center section. This is very reminiscent of the Trimaster way of doing it. If you want to display the model flying then you are golden. If not, then you will have to separate the doors from the panel. It is easy if you take your time and follow the instructions. A little sanding and viola you have doors and the bottom of the fuselage.

Fuselage-
Assembly of the fuselage is easy. There is a cross shaped support for the wings that will have to be added, as well as, the round weight. I glued my weight in place to prevent it from rolling around slightly. Part A3 holds the weight relatively still but I could just see me dropping it and the weight being loose in there. Add the wheel well and the cockpit assembly and your ready to close it up. This presented no particular problem. The only seam to clean up is on the fuselage spine where the engine exhaust will be. Everything else fit perfectly with just some Mr. Surfacer to hide the seam.  
The fit of the canopy is so good it is a good time to add it how. Tamiya solved the whole fit of the front canopy by making the window and the surrounding panel clear. This will need to be masked and painted RLM 66 whenever you have it out.  

Wings and tail-
The tail is a three-piece assembly that requires you to align the horizontal portion, as the join was not as clean as I would have liked. This is not a dig, just that they don’t “snap” in place and have to be aligned. Oh my God, you mean I have to actually build this model? Yes it is true. The tail itself fits so nice that mine weren’t glued on until after painting. Yes, Virginia there is a Santa Claus and he is named Tamiya. There has been some talk about the Tamiya tails being too small when compared to the Trimaster ones. My take on that is who cares? This baby builds up into a beautiful model. Maybe someone more knowledgeable will chime in but I don’t really care.  The wings are easy to build and are just a top and a bottom each. The wings fit on the supports so well that I did not even glue mine on. This eases painting later.  

Engine-
I elected to not build the separate engine as I think it spoils the lines of this airplane. So it was just a matter of building up the engine nacelle. Another word of caution based on experience, don’t add the poly caps to the engine nacelle. The holes that are in the mount (Part B20) are good enough to use. It will be loose but I think it is easier to change and will help it sit better.  If you do choose to open the nacelle there are some pesky mold marks on the inside. Some may say that there is some sink marks on the nacelles themselves but I think these look great as a distressed skin as they are only vertical. I liked them and left them alone.  

Painting-
Some parts, like the wings and tail, where left off as I painted. These really did fit so well that there was no need to put them together and this aided in being able to do the camouflage scheme.   

You are presented with three distinct paint schemes in the kit. All of them are colorful and make great markings but I can’t leave well enough alone. I wanted to do a natural metal airplane, especially after doing the new Master Class Model Building Video, so I searched my decals and came up with a Trimaster sheet for the He-162 that had exactly what I was looking for. “White 6” was a typical airplane with the front of the fuselage unpainted with puttied joints and a nose panel painted in some color. The wings and tail assembly were painted prior to assembly on the real airplane so building it the way I did it was the way the real one was.  

I actually built two of these kits (hey it’s Tamiya so you know it will be easy) so I needed another scheme. I decided to use one of the kit markings for Oblt. Demuth with the kill markings on the tail, “Yellow 11”. This had the red, black and white marking around the nose.   

I know what the German painting instructions call for but every color photo I’ve seen from the period on the He-162 showed them to be painted in dark colors. So despite what Tamiya called for I elected to use Brown Violet and Dark Green. I’m not going to call them 82 or 83. There is confusion with that method and I’m just a model builder so from here on out BV will be Brown Violet and DG will be Dark Green. Tamiya recommends a Light Green, here after not mentioned as LG. Simple and understandable.  

Prior to painting, I had to fill the proper panel lines so that the putty would be correct. The real airplane had its panel lines filled so I filled them on the NMF machine. I left them alone on the camouflage machine. I used Tamiya putty and filled the panel lines, not all of them just the ones that weren’t used for servicing. Both models were washed with Dawn dish detergent and left to dry.  

Both airplanes received a coat of ALCLAD gray primer, which is my primer of choice.

NMF aircraft- The whole aircraft was painted with ALCLAD II Aluminum. Once that was dry, I masked over the panels that needed to be and sprayed Model Master RLM 76 on the lower surfaces. BV and DG were masked in time. The nose was a darker color and I thought it might be primer red. If it isn’t prove me wrong as the tonal qualities of the red arrow and the primer looks really close to me. The whole model was sprayed with Mr. Hobby GREY can, NOTE GREY CAN, Clear Gloss to seal everything. Next I painted Gunze Mr. Surfacer 1000 onto the panel lines. Once dried, I used Micromesh and lightly sanded the surfacer to “smooth” it in like real putty was.   

“Yellow 11”- Preshading with Model Master RLM 66, the model was ready for the camouflage. I purposely thinned my paint extremely thin and sprayed it on so that I could see the preshading. This replicated the thin application of the real thing. RLM 76 was sprayed first. I used hard masks with Tamiya tape and then sprayed the BV and DG. I masked off the red, black and white nosebands even though Tamiya gives them to you as decals. Once everything was dried, I sprayed Mr. Hobby GREY can, NOTE GREY CAN, clear gloss. This will become important in a little bit.   

Decals-
The old Trimaster decals fit worked like they were suppose to and snuggled down perfectly with Solvaset.  

The Tamiya decals were a little thicker but they reacted well with setting solution and there was no problem to be seen. The decals were sealed with a coat of Mr. Hobby GREY can, Gloss Coat.  

So far, so good. I was on a roll and would be finished shortly, or so I thought.  

Disaster and nasty words-
After letting the decals dry for about a day I sprayed Mr. Hobby BLUE can Flat Coat. Now if my history lessons were correct the blue and gray fought the American civil war. Well the BLUE and the GREY fought the civil war on my paint jobs as well. The blue separated, (I thought it was the gray in the civil war), and did not work at all. At first I thought no problem another coat and it will be fine. No it did not help. Sand with micromesh another coat of flat and still not much better.

Swearing in every language I knew and some I didn’t, I sat down dejected in my model room and thought how could this happen to me. Well I’m just a Joe Smuck and if I could read Japanese I would have seen that you couldn’t mix the blue and gray overcoats. What was I thinking? It is plainly written there on the label, in Japanese gibberish, but there none the same. With thoughts of seeing how well the model would fly I elected to strip the model. Luckily I was barely able to save the NMF fuselage. I did not spray over the aluminum so it didn’t go to hell. I was able to save the tail and with micromesh, most of the fuselage.  

Using Polly-S Paint and decal remover, I removed all the decals and paint back to bare plastic.  

Now what? I am almost out of kit decals. I ended up using some Aeromaster decals for the stencils. I also ran across a color picture on the Internet of a machine captured by the British at Leck. It was an unassuming machine with just a tail number. Feeling beaten down I elected to not put the kill markings on, not to put the red, black and white nose bands, just a plain jane run of the mill He-162.

The photo clearly shows the front of the airplane with an RLM 70 Dark Green with the panel behind the pilot as DG and the rest of the fuselage BV. The right wing was RLM 70 as well so I went to town with that and was finally able to see a nice model that represented the chaos of the final months of war.  

Both kits were then airbrushed with Model Master Acrylic Flat. I tested a wing first of course. Little gun shy you can understand.  

Final touches-
Adding the wings, tail assembly, pitot tube, the engine pods, and gear doors and the model was completed. Weathering was kept to a minimum of a burnt umber wash to the panel lines.    

Conclusion-
Like the real airplane there are compromises in the kit. Some things are plug and play (wings and tail) and others require you to cut things (the wheel well covers). However, this kit is leaps and bounds better than the Trimaster/Dragon kits for easy of construction and precise fit. Despite my self-induced paint error, the kit was a lot of fun. I’ve since bought another one to build again. Yes it is a small airplane and ugly, but as far as a model goes, it is hard to find a better engineered one.   

Highly recommended.  

Thanks to Tamiya for the review kit and it can be purchased at most hobby shops.

Floyd S. Werner, Jr.

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Photos and text © by Floyd S. Werner, Jr.