Desert Hammers (Fine Molds 1/72 109F-2 and -4)

[Procopius]

Du mußt herrschen und gewinnen
Oder dienen und verlieren,
Leiden oder triumphieren,
Amboß oder Hammer sein.

[you must rule and win

or serve and lose,
suffer or triumph,
be the anvil or the hammer.]

-- Goethe, "Geh! Gehorche meinen Winken"

"...Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about[.]"

-- George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language"

Having delayed a planned Blenheim build with an errant foot, I have decided to take upon myself an unpleasant task; I'm going to build not one, but two kits of my second-least favorite aircraft of World War II, exceeded in my dislike only by the ugly and brutish Fw190. I'm going to build two 109Fs by Fine Molds, arguably the best kit of this unpleasant-looking aircraft, the F model being probably the apex of its development.

I'm going to be building a 109F-2 Trop of Hauptmann Eduard Neumann, Gruppenkommandeur of I/JG27, and a 109F-4 of Hauptmann Karl-Heinz Krahl, Gruppenkommandeur of II/JG3, both c. 1942.

Eduard Neumann was born in 1914 and fought with the Condor Legion alongside Franco's Fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War, where he claimed two victories, before becoming Adjutant of JG27 shortly before the Battle of Britain. He was promoted to command of I/JG27 when his predecessor in that post was dispatched by RAF fighters over the Channel.

Neumann was apparently an early sponsor of Marseille -- and I suppose there are two kinds of people who know about Marseille, those who think he was an amazing pilot with a propensity for overclaiming, and those who think he was a stupendous liar with a propensity for intermittently shooting down aircraft -- and by the time of Marseille's death, Neumann had risen to command the whole of JG27. Wikipedia diplomatically notes that "Neumann was a believer in leading his squadron from the ground", not quite the stuff of Wagnerian legend, perhaps.

In any case, during Neumann's tenure in the Western Desert, JG27 went from victory after victory to being broken on the wheel of Allied airpower: Canadian ace J F Edwards killed 40-claim ace Gunter Steinhausen on 6 September 1942, and John H Curry, an American Spitfire pilot with the RCAF eliminated 59-claim ace Hans-Arnold Stahlschmidt on 7 September; Marseille himself was killed in a flying accident on 30 September. These three pilots accounted for almost half of JG27's claims between April 1941 and September 1942, and the unit never really recovered from the blow.

Additionally, during Neumann's tenure, there appear to have been some problems with false claims and a near total failure of the much-vaunted German claim verification system. Neumann survived the war and lived to be 93, dying in 2004.

Karl-Heinz Krahl was also born in 1914, and also served with the Condor Legion, albeit as a bomber pilot. He retrained as a fighter pilot after the conclusion of the SCW, serving with JG2 in the Battles of France and then Britain, rising to command I/JG2 at the very end of the latter. He then became Gruppenkommandeur of II/JG3, flying out of Sicily against Malta, where he was killed by ground fire from the Royal Artillery on 14 April 1942 while strafing Luqa. (Krahl was the second Luftwaffe ace to be shot down over Malta within a week's time; Hermann Neuhoff was shot down either by a 185 Squadron Hurricane or a 249 Squadron Spitfire on 10 April.)

I will be building both of their aircraft; I've never built a Fine Molds kit before, so this should be interesting.

[Hamden]

Interesting sounding project mind if I tag along.

Roger

[rob85]

As ever I`m In and sounds like good fun!

Rob

Edited February 16, 2015 by rob85

[Duncan B]

You have picked the best kit (by a country mile IMO) of the 109 in the Gentleman's scale. The cockpit gets criticised for lack of detail but honestly you'll need a endoscope to see into the cockpit once it's completed anyway, seat belts are about the only thing I ever add.

I look forward to seeing how you get on with my favourite model of one of my aircraft, "unpleasant looking" indeed!

(p.s. they fall together without any real trouble, ok, the rear joint under the fuselage where the lower wing joins has to be treated with care, but other than that no problems so I expect you'll have these finished by Saturday.)

Duncan B

[Pete in Lincs]

"Anything with a Prop & guns can't be all bad."

(Not quite a Stan Laurel quote)

[Stew Dapple]

I'm in, PC, start at your leisure

Cheers,

Stew

[FalkeEins]

never built one of these, so watching with interest. And a decent summing up of the culture of over-claiming that was endemic in certain Jagdgeschwader of which JG 27 was one of the most notorious..

by way of example here's a small article that considers the (hugely inflated) claims filed by JG 2 on just four dates during the summer of 1941

http://falkeeins.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/luftwaffe-fighter-ace-claims-and.html

[CedB]

Germans making false claims? Mein Gott! (That's the limit of my schoolboy German, except of course for "Himmel Hans, der Englander has shot me" which we all know from schoolboy comics. Along with "Hander Hoch" which I think is something to do with bacon).

I like the 109 too. Not as much as the Spit, obviously, but it does have an aggressive look. Are there pilots? Can't see from the sprue shots but, if so, you must give them an expression like the lunatic Ace in "Red Tails".

Oh, by the way, I realised when I saw the pictures that masking kits, decals etc count in the stash on scalemodeller (if you add them) so you're ratio's all wrong, sorry. And it's the collecting that's part of the fun. Got it.

Watching with anticipation! Ced.

[06/24]

Having tentatively begun my first ever German builds to give the Hurri and Spit something to shoot at, I'm looking forward to this.

The Malta connection is interesting, had a a fab holiday there a couple of years ago, lots of good WW2 heritage.

[rob85]

Malta is a fantastic subject if not pitted with issues about colour mk of this and that, were x ever based there etc etc. but thats all part of the fun and the intrigue of the place! I should imagine the German subjects have less mystery and issue as they were not really fighting for thier life with whatever can to hand (if someone said they used to throw stones from faith hope and charity when out ammo you could almost believe it) and were altogether better kept. I am thinking of getting the dogfight doubles so I can hang a spit going after a Schmitt for my son!

Rob

Edited February 16, 2015 by rob85

[POTKC]

Oh, you don't like the 109F? Have you ever tries building a Z? You'd probably die.

[Pete in Lincs]

And don't mention the T.

Oh, 2 sugars, thanks.

[POTKC]

The T isn't that bad, it's just a catapult version...the Z has a bad case of siamese twins!!!

[modelglue]

Good good good. Hopefully Airfix comes through for you.

I don't have a Finemolds '109F yet...

[Procopius]

Well go figure, of all the paints I don't have, one of them is RLM78, the underbelly colour for both of these little devils. I've ordered a bottle of Testors Modelmaster from New Mexico and a bottle of Lifecolor from Missouri; whichever one wins the race will have triumphed in a great contest of strength and will be deemed most accurate and best RLM78 by yours truly and used in this build.

You have picked the best kit (by a country mile IMO) of the 109 in the Gentleman's scale. The cockpit gets criticised for lack of detail but honestly you'll need a endoscope to see into the cockpit once it's completed anyway, seat belts are about the only thing I ever add.

I look forward to seeing how you get on with my favourite model of one of my aircraft, "unpleasant looking" indeed!

I confess, I'm magnificently unruffled, in general, by lack of cockpit detail. The kits do look very nice, similar in style to a Hasegawa release. Any trepidation I feel is over the fabulous price of the kits.

never built one of these, so watching with interest. And a decent summing up of the culture of over-claiming that was endemic in certain Jagdgeschwader of which JG 27 was one of the most notorious..

by way of example here's a small article that considers the (hugely inflated) claims filed by JG 2 on just four dates during the summer of 1941

http://falkeeins.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/luftwaffe-fighter-ace-claims-and.html

Thanks! Yes, the "robust" verification system of the Luftwaffe has always been a source of fascination to me...I mean, if it was so accurate, the RAF would have been extinct sometime in August of 1940. As far as I can tell, it only ever really worked very well during the period of RAF sweeps over occupied Europe in 1941 and 1942...and I'm more than a little gratified to see in your link that even then, this was hardly always the case.

Germans making false claims? Mein Gott!

Typical shabby Allied trick, not actually having been shot down when claimed by the great [insert name here].

Having tentatively begun my first ever German builds to give the Hurri and Spit something to shoot at, I'm looking forward to this.

Yep, that's why I build 'em too! They're for my rogues gallery.

Malta is a fantastic subject if not pitted with issues about colour mk of this and that, were x ever based there etc etc. but thats all part of the fun and the intrigue of the place! I should imagine the German subjects have less mystery and issue as they were not really fighting for thier life with whatever can to hand (if someone said they used to throw stones from faith hope and charity when out ammo you could almost believe it) and were altogether better kept. I am thinking of getting the dogfight doubles so I can hang a spit going after a Schmitt for my son!

I was reading Malta: The Spitfire Year today, and there's a passage that briefly mentions a raid on 28 April 1942: "...37 Ju88s and 15 Ju87s, escorted by many Messerschmitts and Macchis, arrived to attack the usual targets. Six Spitfires and four Hurricanes [were] scrambled..." Ten fighters against all that, can you imagine! It must have seemed like they were about to be swept away at any moment, like there was no possible hope of victory. I can see that ragged little formation as clearly as anything, struggling for height, getting ready to plunge into the maelstrom. "The whole earth is the tomb of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men." Certainly in mine. I had to put the book down, I was quite overcome.

Oh, you don't like the 109F? Have you ever tries building a Z? You'd probably die.

Pfft, there's slightly more 109 in building two Fs than there is in building a single Z.

[CedB]

"The whole earth is the tomb of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men." Certainly in mine. I had to put the book down, I was quite overcome.

Me too, reading that. "The few" are, fortunately, still honoured here by most. And now, rightly joined by Bomber Command, previously left out for some reason we would now call "Political Correctness".

More photos here. Some great photos of the forgotten heroes at the unveiling.

I love the history behind (some of) the models we make and it's worth remembering.

Thanks PC.

[POTKC]

Pfft, there's slightly more 109 in building two Fs than there is in building a single Z.

That is, in fact, true!

[Procopius]

That is, in fact, true!

I would never lie to you.

[CedB]

Haven't seen fine Molds before so interested in what you think about the quality of the kits.

Had a quick look on Amazon and fancy the ME 410, perhaps being chased by a Beau.

Prices vary wildly but this one looks OK http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fine-Molds-Messerschmitt-410-B-1/dp/B0009N9PFY/ref=sr_1_9?s=kids&ie=UTF8&qid=1424122419&sr=1-9&keywords=Fine+mold

(Sorry about the link, on my iPad)

Looks OK, "Dispatched from and sold by Kamikaze Japan."

Perhaps safer with the Tamiya from Hannants?

[Winenut]

Looking forward to this.

Very harsh though on the 109's and 190's.

I thought my 1:72 Italeri Dora was the picture of loveliness

Cheers

Bruce

[Procopius]

I thought my 1:72 Italeri Dora was the picture of loveliness

Skillfully built, to be sure, in the same way that the late Joan Rivers was a triumph of the surgeon's art near the end, but hardly could be said to be beautiful.

[rob85]

Mr p I have to say try to move past being overcome as the story of the defence of malta is an enthralling one (and please I am in no way trying to take away how horrendous it must have been by that comment) there is so many sub plots and actions and individuals that make the years of its seige utterly inspiring and will make you want to honour everyone on there through the medium of models. James Holland fortress malta is a good over view of the defence.

We had at work one of those silly training days where you find your leadership style. All the store managers had to get up at the end and say who inspires them, I went up after a young arrogant girl who had just used Richard Branson as her example, I said malta is my inspiration and then told them a few points of what happened and some of my favourite people from it and got applause (hopefully for malta as I didn't deserve them) they definitely kicked RB's as.

Oh also the art work by one of the well know pilot dennis barnham give great insight into what they took on in the air http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/images/paintings/iwm/624x544/iwm_iwm_ld_3960_624x544.jpg

Also similar is the battle for Greece, the account by Roald Dahl is brilliant and we'll worth reading as they were going up alone against utterly phenomenal odds and still coming back. But when they went up together as a show of strength only to get bumped by hundreds of luftwaffe well its worth having a nose you know

Oh I have witter ed again, thats what you get for saying the m word

Rob

[Procopius]

Oh also the art work by one of the well know pilot dennis barnham give great insight into what they took on in the air http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/images/paintings/iwm/624x544/iwm_iwm_ld_3960_624x544.jpg

I must have first seen this painting over twenty years ago as a small boy in Stephen B Sears's Desert War in North Africa, and I've loved it ever since.

Also similar is the battle for Greece, the account by Roald Dahl is brilliant and we'll worth reading as they were going up alone against utterly phenomenal odds and still coming back. But when they went up together as a show of strength only to get bumped by hundreds of luftwaffe well its worth having a nose you know

Yes, in Going Solo! I remember that from fifth grade, it was a big day for me when we read that part of the book. His short story collection "Over to You" is sitting on the bookshelf next to my computer as I type this.

We had at work one of those silly training days where you find your leadership style. All the store managers had to get up at the end and say who inspires them, I went up after a young arrogant girl who had just used Richard Branson as her example, I said malta is my inspiration and then told them a few points of what happened and some of my favourite people from it and got applause (hopefully for malta as I didn't deserve them) they definitely kicked RB's as.

Good show, I fear my leadership inspiration is Captain Bligh, as the last time I was in charge of people it was at the turn of the century, and my work crew of Disadvantaged Youths turned on me and beat the stuffing out of me. Good times!

In any case, started assembly. The cockpit bits you see put together are three pieces: the floor and back; the seat; and the firewall/mounting point for the instrument panel. These all fit snugly. I note the 109F-4 seat has a back, whereas the 109F-2 does not, I assume that's correct. There are joysticks somewhere too, and unusually for Japanese kits, pilots, who I won't be using. The cockpit bits fit pretty snugly, but a test-fit with the fuselage shows no mounting pins at the side, just a notch at the rear of the cockpit for the back wall to fit into. I'm sure it won't be a problem, but you never know.

The rest of the bits remain on the sprues for now. Surprisingly few parts, aside from the in my opinion needlessly complex cowling.

[Procopius]

Looks OK, "Dispatched from and sold by Kamikaze Japan."

I think Navy Bird just placed an order with them. Despite our unfortunate national experience with Kamikaze delivery in the last war, I live in hope that this will prove more pleasant.

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Deliver to UK and it will bounce off the armoured deck. Over there you might have more of a problem...