Wow Louis, what a magnificent kit the ICM 111 is.
A lot of work to build both the Monogram and the ICM as a comparison and for two GB's at the same time. I'll keep following your progress on both of the Heinkels, great stuff.

Louis, the ICM has a complete bomb bay, unlike the Monogram. I'm wondering if it can be seen. I want to do mine as a B of B pathfinder, which operated bombless, usually. The outfit with the viking ship insignia.

Yes Ferry, this ICM kit has been fabulous so far. I am very pleased with how it is engineered and how it is fitting so far. The older Monogram kit has been fun too...

I wanted to build the Monogram kit at the same time, and now I am very glad I decided to do this. The only downfall is that I catch myself wanting to go ahead and keep building the one I am currently working on at the moment.

Then I have to stop construction and switch gears back over to the other kit to try and keep them on par with each other as far as progress goes...

Thank you for following along with the progress. I sincerely appreciate that... 🙂

Hello Bernard ! You are absolutely correct about the bomb bay. I just finished building it tonight, so stay tuned for some pictures ! I have seen that Viking ship Unit Insignia before in a decal set some place... Hopefully we will find out how much of the bomb bay can be seen once the fuselage is buttoned up on the ICM kit...

Today I built the bomb bay for the ICM kit... It was not the next step in the assembly sequence. I jumped ahead since I wanted to get things ready to start spraying some RLM 66 and RLM 02 colors.

The Monogram kit is almost ready to have the fuselage halves glued together. As soon as I spray these two colors, and detail the cockpit on the Monogram build, I can glue it together. (After that, there shouldn't be too much more work and the wings will go on it...).

So here is how I built the Bomb Bay for the ICM kit...

There are two identical plastic trees that have duplicated parts. These parts are mainly for the engines, props, ordnance and bomb bay areas. If you should decide not to build yours with the bomb bay, you can skip this step, as ICM has thoughtfully included a separate bomb bay door insert that models the doors closed, so you have options here.

I started out by snipping the parts from the plastic trees. Take care when you do this as these parts are slightly different. After a few swipes with some wet or dry sand paper to remove the attachment points, these were ready to glue together.

Here I have completed the two bomb cells. If you notice something odd here, it's because the He-111 carried the internal bomb load in a vertical position. The bombs were not carried horizontally as in most other planes. This also became a limiting factor when bombs started getting larger. If I'm not mistaken, when the Luftwaffe crews used the internal bomb bay, the size of the bombs were limited to a 250 Kg weight in each cell.

Here the vertical bomb racks are done... Later Heinkel came out with a new bomb carrying fixture that allowed the He-111 to carry much larger bombs (and even Torpedoes), but they were mounted outside of the bomb bay and were simply hung under the fuselage.

In this next photo, you will see that I have glued the vertical bomb bay cells to the bomb bay door opening insert that is mounted under the fuselage, between the wings...

In this last photo, you can see how the bomb bay will look before the ordnance is added. There will also be a set of doors hanging vertically once this part is installed... These doors will be attached using the four rectangular holes on either side of the vertical storage openings.

These parts fit together extremely well. In fact, I snapped the internal dividers in place against the outer walls. Then I simply glued the parts once they were in alignment...

I'm getting ready to spray some RLM 66 and 02 colors soon. That will be the next step.

As usual, comments are encouraged...

Really enjoying this series of posts, Louis. I'm not getting much/any time at the bench at the moment but this feels like building by proxy, definitely keeps me motivated.

Hi Louis, I am catching up with all of the 'groups' stuff this evening, life has had me busy again - this is a really great idea - the comparison is just so interesting. I can't imagine too many imodelers would do this kind of WIP thread - not only is it a typically prolific 'Gardner moment' but also a sensational concept. In 2016 Eduard put out a 109 G6, Tamiya have just followed suit as you well know. Airfix vs Tamiya Mustang is an interesting match up too. I like the way your comparison draws out the positives in both kits - would the potential speediness of the Monogram be more attractive than the added detail of the ICM. For me the 'missing windows' would seal it! Thanks for doing this comparison - it will henceforth be compulsive viewing for me!

Coming along nicely Louis! Fun to see the type of comparisons you can get when you do a Skunk Works build of multiple versions of the same subject. I'm getting up the nerve to try one myself...