Early He-111s
I’ve always wanted a He-111B Pedro to go with my SCW collection. I’ve been kicking myself for not getting the Cutting Edge conversion for the Monogram kit eons ago. The reviews I’ve read by builders of the Roden 1:72 kit sounded like an exercise in masochism followed by long sessions of therapy. I recently found a couple of those Roden kits for $16.00 each. (I’ve seen them advertised on e-bay for as much as $89 if you can believe that!). I figured that if I smashed the plastic to pieces with a sledge hammer I wouldn’t be out a great deal of money and maybe I’d feel better. I decided to build the He-111A first to see what I was up against. The kit left much to be desired, some modeling skills required. The plastic had lots of flash and needed a lot of clean up. Then the plastic needed to be trimmed, re-shaped, sanded, re-sized and almost nothing fit without a lot pf plastic surgery. The clear pieces for the fuselage windows never got fit properly. It appears that the plastic is the same for their A, B, C, and E models, with different engines and exhaust systems. The wings have the leading edge radiators molded on which need to be removed if building anything earlier than the B-2 version. I filed and sanded the radiators off and re-scribed the leading edges. In the process of de-bonding, re-shaping, and reattaching numerous parts the rather delicate landing gear broke off, The instructions show the landing gear in the wheel well box as one of the first steps. The box is too large for the wing halves to join, so must be agressively filed down. I ended up scratch building new landing gear parts using parts from the B model as a guide and re-installed the gear as one of the last steps. The wings looked like they might have a decent fit to the fuselage, but then the dihedral was way off and the landing gear looked splayed outboard. Also, the left and right wings had noticeably different dihedrals. So, a jig was built to hold the fuselage with the vertical at 90 degrees, and the wings were attached with CA glue at the proper dihedral followed buy lots of filler. Eventually, I got the thing looking sort of like a He-111 and squirted some paint on it and finished it as a Chinese bomber. It’s a candidate for one of my worst builds ever! Only 10 A models were built. The Luftwaffe rejected them for being underpowered and unacceptable, so all 10 went to China and were soon lost to combat and accidents. Not a great success story.
Then it was time to make use of that experience and attempt to build the B-1. The build went much smoother, as I knew what had to be re-worked before I got in too much trouble. The box art shows Pedro 15, but it has the radiators and the single exhaust stacks of a B-2. Pedro 15 was a B-1. I was surprised that the decals were pretty good, but wrong for the fuselage codes. They were white and in the wrong font. I had a sheet of Spanish codes in 1:48, but they were too large. So, I scanned them on my computer, reduced them to the proper size and printed them on decal paper. That worked out pretty well. Fortunately, I found some painting masks for these kits so I was spared the hassle of making masks for all those tiny little windows. I had some Model Master RLM 66 Lichtgrau left over from the last ice age, so I used it up. I painted it using the kit painting guide before I found a good photo of Pedro 15, and realized that the white on the wingtips extended too far inboard, the photos show a narrow band of white. Maybe I’ll fix that someday after I get out of therapy. Also, the double-barreled exhaust stacks that came with the kit don’t look much like those in the photo of the real thing. Whatever, it looks like a Pedro and sits next to my Spanish Ju-86.
Now, I’m thinking about a nice shake ’n bake in 1:48 or 1:32.
Happy New Year!
Fantastic results from the utterly challenging Roden kits, Chas!
Congratulations!
I admire your tenacity tackling these Roden Pedros with such impressive success, Chas. Not only are Roden kits challenging, I never met one that wasn’t frustrating as hell. Congrats!
Great work on these beasts. Roden kits are challenging in the extreme. Excellent results.
Excellent result on those builds, Chas @chasbunch
You clearly tackled the challenges of those kits.
I know nothing about Roden kits, but You work turnet out great!
Hero!
Beautifully built model. I've never seen this build before in this version.
Beautiful mate. Perfect.
Well done, Chas!
Nice work on those difficult kits , they both look good .
Very nice results, Chas! Beautiful pictures as well. Congrats on this challenging build.
After all that, I'd be looking for a shake 'n' bake too! A triumph of tenacity and talent over plastic.
Excellent work in a shake and bake kit that is not! A lot of work went into it and they both came out looking great!
I have wanted one of these early versions of the HE-111 as well, but had heard the less than stellar reviews of the Roden kit. Probably no worse than some of the other kits I've had to tackle, but I have enough desk queens waiting in boxes already, so...
Nonetheless, these turned out great. Well done Chas (@chasbunch)
Nicely done Chas, both of them.
Smart work, Chas... I am following in your footsteps so to speak, refurbishing two early '111' kits which are both amalgamations, one being the Roden bomber kit B variant and the other, the airliner version He111C, both with main sections taken from the Hasegawa P/H version kits. One is the He111G and the other, the He111L, of which two were produced by refitting two G versions with BMW132 radials. Hopefully, they may appear on these pages soon.
I also have a photo saved on my computer of what I believe was an He111J, a very limited-production variant with the early style nose and canopy, early DB600 series engines and what was then the new straight leading edge wing. I expect that to be A) using mostly parts from the Airfix kit, with the Roden engines and early-stye forward fuselage, and B) 'plane' difficult to build, if you'll excuse the pun. I'm up for a challenge but if you never see these versions made manifest, you'll know why! :-).
Once again, nice work on your kits... good to have the not-often-seen-or-mentioned versions making an appearance.
Thanks, Paul. Hoping to seeing yours - straight wings or radial engines will be interesting to see on a 111.