Hasegawa Heinkel He 111 Build in 1/72 Scale Part III

With major assembly complete I sprayed the model with Mr. Surfacer 1000 to check for flaws. Given the size of the underwing crosses I decided they would look best if painted. I painted these areas white and masked off the crosses with Tamiya tape.

The uppersurfaces had a standard factory RLM 70 / 71 splinter scheme. The masking tape here is regular household tape.

Here is the splinter scheme with the masks removed. Two hours of masking, fifteen minutes of painting. I laid this pattern out as it is shown in the Monogram Guide.

The aircraft I’m modeling had black undersides for night missions. I have pre-shaded the panel lines with a scale black mixture, the same mix will be oversprayed in a light coat to bring out the highlights.

Here it is with the black applied and the insignia masks removed. The panel highlighting is subtle but you do get some tonal variation between panels.

This aircraft had “clouds” of RLM 76 Light Blue applied over the uppersurfaces. This photograph shows the colors used.

Decals are in place and have been sealed with Future (Klear) in preparation for panel line washing and weathering. Decals are from Aims sheet 72D010.

The kit pitot tube is easily broken off, at least by me. I have learned to replace this sort of thing with metal parts. I made this one with Albion Alloys tube and 0.005” Nitenol wire for the tip. The Nitenol wire does not break or bend, but returns to its original shape if bumped.

There is a lot of glare from the lightbox in this photograph but even so you can still see much of the interior of the nose compartment. With the hatch open even more of the detail is visible.

The finished model represents the aircraft of bomber “ace” Oberleutnant Dietrich Kornblum, Staffelkapitän of 4./KG 53.  Kornblum was awarded the Knight’s Cross after completing 400 missions.  The dorsal turret transparency was formed using the “plunge mold” technique.