Hello, well schucks, I’m still in Luftwaffe mode. Here’s another one I’ve always wanted to do that I recently got off ebay fairly cheap. It’s the Heinkel HE 219 A “Uhu” or “Eagle Owl”. For all intents and purposes, the He 219 was Germany’s version of the P-61 Black Widow. It spent its time dropping Lancasters and chasing Mosquitos. The Uhu was apparently the first plane be equip with ejection seats. The He 219 was a formidable foe, fast and deadly with plenty of cannons. Some had two “Schrage Musik”, upward firing cannons in a ventral bay. Basically, the bombers never knew what hit them. Like the Me 262, the He 219 was another case of too little too late with under 300 being built
This one will be mostly out of the box, but we’ll see. I started with the cockpit which I thought was sufficiently detailed. The instructions called for a weird interior color that I’ve never heard of, TS-48 gunship grey?. Well, anything after November of 1941 “should” have had RLM 66, so I went with Gunze RLM 66. I then added seatbelts from a spare Eduard Luffwaffe fighter fret I had in the stash. The plane would normally be a tail sitter, but Tamiya included a metal weight which is integrated into the cockpit…very cool! I wasn’t sure if any of it will be seen so I painted it as well.
O, this should be good. I do like a nice 219, will be looking forward to this.
Joe, the 219 was the first aircraft to enter full production with ejection seats. But the He 280 had been fitted with them before the 219, and the first live ejection was from a 280 in Jan 1943.
Thanks all for the kindness. I’m finally in for an update. I’m wrapping up a bathroom remodel which has been consuming quite a bit of my free time. I hate household taping and painting. Anyways, with the 219, I’m limited to a few hours here and a few hours there. I did get the frame together and was surprised as this is a rather large aircraft. I somehow managed to slightly misalign the fuselage halves as the glue set, so I had a slight step to deal with. This resulted in more sanding through detail than I really needed…and the 219 has alot of detail at the seam…ugh! I ended up losing the small circular access panels on the spine which were poorly engraved to begin with. Tried as I might, I was unable to salvage them. I may try to scribe them back in.
The nacelles fit good to the wing, but getting there is a challenge. They “clamshell” together, which leaves a nasty seam that I found tough to get out. I used the super glue accelerator trick on these. Fortunately there was no detail to worry about there.
Here we have the engine fronts, the antenna/nose, and the “Musik” added. I drilled out the Musik 30 mm cannon barrels and painted them. I’m not sure why as they will be hidden. Other than my seam issues, this has gone together quite nice…no filler.
I’m having difficulty on deciding a scheme. The all light grey versions, quite frankly, bore me silly. I want one like that on the box art, which attracted me to the kit in the first place…black underside and preferably with spinner spirals. I figured I’d throw down the scheme and then peruse ebay for one that fits my stringent needs. Black finishes are still experimental for me, so I started by spraying the underside XF-24 Dark Grey with various mixes of XF-69 NATO Black and XF-1 Flat Black added. Here’s where I ended up. I’ll probably add some streaking later.
I highlighted the upper surface with more XF-69.
The black was then taped off to await the upper color, which I believe should be RLM 76. This is where I left off for now.
I hope to start paintng the camo soon. Oh all those littles RLM colored dots to come…
Really nice progress Joe, those guns do look real nice, shame they will be hidden. I know what you mean about that scheme. One good thing about 72nd is that Dragon do just enough diferant versions to do differant schemes, and i am edging towards a black underside for the 32nd kit.
Interesting to see how you did the black. One of the guys at the model club i am in did a 1/32nd Ju 99 C NF in all black. When i aksed him how he did the black, his response was that there was not a bit of black on it. He had started with a light grey and worked up. But i do like the efefct you have got there with this. Until i saw the 88, it only occured to me to use black for a black finish.
Man, you have a steady hand Joe! Your preshade Airbrush lines are so straight, mine look like a country back road. Ty for this , another , expertly done WIP. You’re a constant learning source for me and I appreciate your work and sharing.
Looking really good Joe! I know what you mean about those hatches on the top. I ended up deepening them with a sewing needle in a pinvise. They didn’t come out perfect, but at least they are there. RLM 76 is the color ended up using for the base color on mine with splotches of 75 over that. There are a lot of neat schemes for the 219.
