1/72 Academy Bf 109E-4

Gallery Article by Orlando Sucre Rosales on July 5 2010

  Venezuela Independence Day 2010 

 

Hello again, fellow modelers and readers!

After writing several articles about my old Airfix kits, it’s the turn for something different now! This article deals with a model of the more famous Battle of Britain German fighter, the Messerschmitt Bf 109E.  Both the E-3 and the E-4 versions were used in that campaign.  Wrong tactics and insufficient range contributed to the fact that this fighter couldn’t fight over England up to its full capabilities. I’ll write about its famous British adversary, the Supermarine Spitfire Mk. I, in a companion article.

The kit
My Bf 109E is one of the newly-tooled kits Academy began to offer since the second half of the 90’s. It had finely recessed panel lines, a well-detailed cockpit, a very good fit and a level of surface detail that few 1/72 kits of those years had. The kit had decals for two Battle of Britain E-4s and one E-3, and supplied separate canopies and armor plates for the E-3 and the E-4. At first glance I thought it was going to be my definitive Bf 109E, although the decals were slightly out of register and some details, like the gryphon of the JG26 version, weren’t well printed. However, during the build I found some annoying mistakes that changed my initial appreciation of this kit.

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Building 
I began construction by painting and assembling the cockpit parts. By that time I had both Humbrol Authentic RLM02 Grey and Aeromaster RLM02 Grau paints, these are quite different from each other.  A fellow modeler told me that RLM02 had a darker shade at the beginning of WWII, so I used Humbrol’s RLM02 (mixed with 1/3 white) for the main cockpit color.  It was a wrong decision because I later chose to build the Bf 109E-4 flown by Hauptmann Hans von Hahn, who was commander of I/JG3 “Udet” and scored six kills (from 34 during WWII) during the Battle of Britain.  His plane had RLM02 also as a camouflage color, certainly not the dark shade of Humbrol’s RLM02.  I couldn’t paint the cockpit again after the fuselage was closed. My mistake made me to build the kit with the canopy closed, and my Bf-109E ended with two very different shades of RLM02.  Now I don’t believe the story of two different shades of that color… I wonder why some paint manufacturers and some Internet references still list Humbrol’s 92 (the replacement for Humbrol Authentic RLM02 Grey) as equivalent to RLM02 Grau!

Construction of this kit was fast as the fit of the parts was almost perfect.  However, a remarkable exception was the carburetor air intake.  In the position it fitted, it had the intake slots facing perpendicular to the airflow direction, which is obviously wrong!  I had to file, sand and check repeatedly the piece until it fit in place with the slots facing parallel to the airflow direction.  In the process some of the intake plates were partially destroyed.  A better solution would have been replacing the part, but I hadn’t one.

I left the undercarriage and the stabiliser strut assemblies for the final stage.  By the way, the stabiliser struts were too wide and their ends didn’t fit well into their recesses.

Painting 
Most of the time spent in this kit was devoted to painting.  As Hahn’s plane had a yellow nose and half of the spinner in white, I began painting by priming the nose, spinner and rudder areas with MM FS36622 Camouflage gray, then I primed again with flat white, and later I masked and painted the nose and rudder MM RLM04 Yellow.  After that I carefully masked the yellow areas and painted the fuselage and the bottom of the wings and stabilisers Aeromaster RLM65 Light blue.  However, I had to test on scrap different proportions of RLM65 and white until I achieved the shade I was searching for, the final proportion was 2:3 (yes, more white paint than RLM65!)

The hardest part was painting the RLM71 dunkelgrun patches over the fuselage sides. In first place, I decided to paint these before painting the splinter camouflage, because it would be easier to correct any mistake without the camouflage fully painted. In second place, the over-spray pattern of my bottom-feed airbrush is too wide for a realistic effect in 1/72 (and perhaps 1/48 also) with just free-hand airbrushing. In third place, the patches I’ve seen in Hahn’s plane reproductions, in both profile and kit forms, have irregular and elongated shapes.

Therefore I made one template for each fuselage side by drawing the patches on semi-translucent paper and cutting them off carefully with a swivelling knife. I placed the templates over the fuselage sides with Blue Tac short stripes, trying to get a 1 mm separation from the fuselage surface, then I airbrushed Gunze RLM71 Dark green (mixed with 40% white) through the templates’ holes. The edges of the resulting patches weren’t as feathered as I wanted, perhaps a larger separation of the templates from the fuselage would have worked better. Nevertheless, I got the irregular shapes I wanted.

Later I masked the fuselage sides and the wing undersurfaces, and painted the wings and stabilisers’ upper surfaces, fuselage spine, wheel wells and undercarriage inner parts with Aeromaster RLM02 Grey (mixed with 1/3 white.) Then I masked the areas that would remain RLM02 and painted the upper splinter camouflage with Gunze RLM71 (again mixed with 40 % white.)

At this point I also painted the red trim tabs of the control surfaces, the propeller joints with chrome silver, the propeller blades and half of the propeller spinner with Gunze RLM70 Black-green (also mixed with 40% white,) the ring at the tip of the propeller spinner with Hu2 Emerald green, and the exhaust stacks. Looking closely at the stacks I discovered they were moulded with the short flat surfaces representing the exhaust outlets facing forward, as if they were intakes (no comments!) I painted the exhausts with a dark brown/black/gunmetal mix, but I didn’t paint the outlets black (as I always do) in order to hide the manufacturer’s mistake.

Decaling, weathering and finishing
After removing all the masks (except the canopy ones) I airbrushed two coats of acrylic gloss clear and then I applied the decals. I used the kit’s decals and Scale-master swastikas. There were lots of tiny stencils that surely added a distinctive touch to the finished model. I hadn’t any of the problems that other modelers report on Academy decals.

When decaling was finished I applied a sepia-ink wash to highlight all the panel lines and painted some chipping here and there with Hu56 Aluminum, then I airbrushed a coat of acrylic flat clear. Final weathering was done with pastel chalks, with emphasis on the areas behind the exhausts and gun ports. Another coat of acrylic flat clear sealed the weathering, which was kept on the subtle side, assuming that German aces’ fighters were well maintained at least until 1944.

After the weathering was done the undercarriage assemblies, the stabilisers’ struts and the antenna wires (made from human hair) were glued in their places, the navigation lights and the guns were painted, the canopy masks were removed, the canopy glasses were polished and the model was in this way finished in May 2010.

Concluding remarks
The Messerschmitt Bf 109E is without doubt the more famous Battle of Britain German fighter, as the two-engine Bf 110 didn’t succeed as long-range escort fighter.  My eye-catching Bf 109E-4, with its yellow nose and JG3’s serpent, its yellow rudder with kill marks, Hahn’s rooster heads and its unique camouflage certainly looks very nice in my cabinet, along with its famous adversary the Spitfire Mk. I and other less known Battle of Britain aircraft, like a very old Boulton-Paul Defiant Mk. I night-fighter from Airfix. 

Thanks for watching and reading, I hope you’ve enjoyed the photographs.  This model is dedicated to my son David, who likes Messerschmitts very much, although he likes aircraft with shark teeth a bit more!

Greetings from stormy (at least in May and June) Caracas, Venezuela.

Orlando Sucre Rosales

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Photos and text © by Orlando Sucre Rosales