Eduard Bf 109E-1, 1/48. 'Emil Over France'

I added Eduard's dual-combo 'Adlerangriff' to the stash at the beginning of last year but put off doing it until a few months ago due to the dreaded mottling, which I hadn't tried. I had a few chip aways at the kit in the past, doing the cockpit a few months ago before starting the major work last month.

With two kits included I was sure I wanted to do one from France, if possible Dunkirk, and one of the classic yellow nosed ones from later in the Battle of Britain. This way I'd have a 109 to match my Dunkirk Eduard Spitfires and my old BoB Airfix Spit.

The Kit

The twin Emils included in this kit aren't new, debuting in 2012, but that doesn't mean they're old either and display what someone might expect from Eduard kit, primarily in the form of very nice details, and a little bit of classic overcomplicated Eduard design.

The build was generally fine, the cockpit was quite a nice little build and ended up looking nicely. I kept with the plastic parts here as I find PE doesn't end up always looking better than well painted plastic.

The biggest issue is the intrinsic design of the kit, it is meant to really be built with the engine opened and displayed. Whilst the kit has instructions for a closed cowl options, I can't help but feel this was an afterthought. A lot more of the engine had to be chopped off to fit, and the fit of the closed cowl wasn't the best either. The instructions are a bit unclear by telling you parts to not use when doing a closed cowl, but then looking at the diagram you can see that even more parts not listed are missing.

Of course, wheels up presents its own challenges and this kit had issues there. The landing gear covers were bigger than the space allocated on the wing, and the wheels had to be sanded down quite a bit to fit. With the interesting little 'spine' going down the underbelly I drilled a hole to the side which manages to fit just below the cockpit piece.

Now the Adlerangriff kit has one real annoying issue which caught me off guard which is that the kit isn't 2 Bf 109 Emils, but rather one E-1 and one E-3/4. This makes sense when you think about it as the later has the 20mm cannons, so a slightly different wing design to accommodate, however this was never listed on the box or website so you think that the kit would be interchangeable between any versions perhaps with the bulges being a simple extra part to glue on.

This means the kit has a bit of a weird logistic going on, you have 3 possible schemes for your E-1 kit but then 10 schemes for your E-3/4 kit. This was particularly annoying as I can't say any of the schemes for the E-1 particularly stood out for me, with only one being a possible option for a Battle of France scheme without the yellow nose. I ran into a similar issue with their Spitfire Story, but I was able to fix the model to how I'd like and there is one very vague comment on their website that suggests that the two models included are different.

Is it an Eduard kit without a rant? They come so close to perfect but have some small issues in every kit that prevent it.

The Scheme

In the end I went for the only scheme for an E-1 without a yellow nose, this way it can be displayed next to my Dunkirk Spitfires with some degree of plausibility. This machine was flown by Hans Krug, and sports the motto 'Vista Seurte Y Al Toro' that he picked up from a Spanish ace he flew alongside during his time in the Condor Legion. He scored 4 confirmed and 1 unconfirmed kills during the Battle of France, 3 French and 2 British. He would go on to get 5 more kills before being shot down in September 1940 and remaining a POW for the rest of the war.

The bright Hellblau scheme certainly shows off the issues many pilots had with the scheme, it's not surprising that as the war went on more ad-hoc schemes appeared such a in-field mottling to try and darken down the bright fuselage sides of the Emil.

I do have to say that painting the splinter camo seen on the Luftwaffe aircraft is a lot of fun, the masking is easy and the satisfaction of removing the tape to see a perfect line is definitely a good feeling.

Weathering was kept very light, but in the photo of the real aircraft a large amount of exhaust staining could be seen which I tried to replicate. I did a tiny amount of oil work, and a tiny amount of chipping around a few panels to create a little more interest, but the majority of weathering on this one came from the shading when painting. I always appreciate the rivets on an Eduard kit, realistic or not, they act as a good guide for interesting shading.

4 additional images. Click to enlarge.