1/48 Eduard Bf 109G-6 "Cartoon Aircraft"

Gallery Article by Mike Hickey on Nov 14 2019

 

      

7./JG 53 "Cartoon Aircraft"

This is a collection of six Bf 109G-6/R6 Trop variants that were operating in the Sicily area in the middle of 1943. It's believed that one of the unit's ground crew mechanics painted the cartoon characters below the cockpit. It's thought that they might be referring to "in" jokes, pilot nicknames or anecdotes. The 109's were painted in the typical paint scheme of the time which included RLM 76, RLM 74 and RLM 75. They also had yellow painted under their noses and the white stripe on their fuselage. All Bf 109G-6's carried the MG 151 cannon gondolas, and although these were tropical variants they did not carry the dust filter.

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I used the excellent Eduard Bf 109G-6 ProfiPack edition 1/48 scale kit No. 8268 to build all six machines. The kit goes together beautifully with no concerns except a strange looking rod that ran up both oleos on the front side. I couldn't find any reference to what these could be so I removed them. The paint I used was from the Gunze range which sprayed on faultlessly and I used decals from Iliad Design. 

The decals went down without any problem, the only thing I have to say about the decals is that they give you an option for aircraft marked "2". When I was researching this aircraft that had the particular cartoon character the aircraft was marked "7" instead. I chose to use a white 7 decal out of my spares box and do the aircraft marked as I'd seen in the photo.

Mike Hickey

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Photos and text © by Mike Hickey