1/48 Tamiya Bf-109E3/7Trop

by Josu Arévalo

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Construction of this model began as a joke. Some friends intended to pull another Luftwaffe fan friend's leg and compromised to build some luftwaffe planes captured by the Allies. My model was to be a British one, so I had a look at http://www.luftwaffe-experten.co.uk/ to find out which plane could I build in The Captive Luftwaffe 1939-45 forum.

Once I begun researching for my 'victims' I decided to build a Bf109, yeah I know this plane is a classic, but I didn't find many captured 109s so it was to be a little original.

The plane to be done was a Messerschmitt 109E-3 - W.Nr.1304 (AE479) of 1./JG76 flown by FW Karl Hier which on 22nd November, 1939 landed in Woerth, Bass Rhin, 12 miles on the French side of the border. This machine was White 1 and was first test-flown by the French at Orleans - Bricy and later was sent to the British, were it became AE479. Finally, on 7 April 1942 the plane was shipped to the USA. 

This is picture is a nice view of the original plane.

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Construction of the model is very straightforward, as Tamiya's 109E is probably the best of the market. I just put some wire into the tub just to improve my abilities, put some Evergreen bits here and there, made the straps of the pedals with some thin tin from and excellent Rioja wine bottle, reworked the oxygen bottle as I didn't like how it fit in the cockpit and made that typical cushion for the pilots seat with some Warhammer plaster (Green Stuff or something like that).  All this scratchbuilding finished with brake lines made from copper wire to improve the landing gears. 

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Painting was easy too, just think of a spitfire and here you have the camouflage scheme to do. First I painted with enamel Silver or Aluminium the areas where paint could be chipped. When this enamel color was dry I lightly moistened the areas I liked and applied Common Salt to mask the chipped painting areas and waited for the area to fully dry. With this method we got the salt acting like a masking and when we have painted and applied all the effects we want we remove the salt grains with a brush or a toothpick.

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The colors used were Dark Green, Dark Earth, and Yellow for the undersurfaces that were made with Tamiya paintings, and cleared with some Buff, applied onto a 'heavy' pre-shading. Weathering is being achieved using Umber Raw Oleos and painting the panel lines with very diluted Smoke. 

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All markings are made with masks even the serial AE479 (though I must admit this is not very well done) and just a couple of stencils are used. 

This model was commended in IPMS Spain contest in Plasencia 2004, (Spain) which was a really inesperated award. 

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Finally, I want to thank all my friends in AERONET (http://www.network54.com/Forum/255364), for helping me improving my abilities in modelling, specifically my pals Alex Sánchez, Hector Alonso and Ińaki Martínez, superb modelers and very good friends. 

Josu

Photos and text © by Josu Arévalo