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. |
Click on
image below to see larger image
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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.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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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.
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.
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.
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
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