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1/48 MPM Heinkel 177-A3 Greif


Greif

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Hello guys!

I got this Heinkel 177 A3 Greif few months ago at a good price on internet; finally I have all the extra parts I need to start this beauty.

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It's the kit from MPM in 1/48, only He 177 available in this scale. This is meant to be an A3 version which was the evolution of the A1 version.

This aircraft is well known for its development issues with two prototypes lost (V1 during landing and V2 ditched after a dive-bombing attempt over the Baltic Sea), engines reliability (vibrations and fire issues), landing gears (broken or jammed) and air stability with dutch roll issues.... The first A1 acceptance aircrafts were in fact refused but the RLM authorities. The A3 version with its longer fuselage and higher tail had partially solved the stability problems, but the engines were still the major issues and many missions had been aborted due to this. It has been necessary to wait until the A5 variant to really have an operational bomber; the new DB 610 engines were more powerful and less suffered of overheat... still the design has been hazardous for a 1940's plane; the Manchester, in fact has been retired from operational unit for engines reliability issues and the Douglas B19 has been used only for flight tests... the common point between this three aircrafts was their coupled engines.

At the end of the war, more than 1000 He177 had been produced. Heinkel last variants were the A6 plus a very short number of A7 done by A5 retrofits.

The offensive load was conventional bombs (in different sizes and quantity) and guided anti-ship missiles such as Hs 293 and Fritz-X.

For its air self defense, the Greif had an MG 81 in the cockpit; bellow the cockpit, inside a gondola, we find an MGFF (A1), MG-151(A3/A5/A6) or MG-131(A7) pointing forward and an MG131 pointing aft. From the cockpit the radio operator could control a remotely operated Turret located on the top fuselage; this turret was equipped with a single MG-131 on A1 version and twined MG-131 on all other versions. In the central fuselage was operated a single MG-131 turret by a crew member. The tail defense was done by a tail gunner and an MG-151; however, due to the poor efficiency of the tail turret configuration, Heinkel had tried many different configurations with a single MG-131, twined MG-131 and finally at the end of the war, tested on the last A7 version an MG-131 vierling on a tilting turret, but there is no evidence that this turret has ever been operational.

My intention is to convert this A3 into an A5 version and to add details in the cockpit, gondola, undercarriage, central turret and tail turret areas. The painting scheme will not be a night bomber like; but I'm still not sure about the final camo. Now lets have a look the kit; I will add:

- Eduard full internal

- Eduard external

- Eduard belts

- Cmk undercarriage resin kit

- replace the guns

To help me I also have two sets of Eduard masks and books for historical references.

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Fuselage and wings. The wingspan will be about 60 cm... my wife will kill me....

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Stabs and ailerons; undercarriage bay that will be replaced by the CMK one.

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Rudder and engines parts.

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Two tail turret configurations options: early type A1/A3 and late type A3/A5/A7.

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Cockpit details, MG's, engine levers, tail wheel...

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CMK undercarriage resin kit; quite expensive but the molding quality is stunning! Weighted wheels, DB's engine aft sections, panels, details...

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A DB engine in close-up.

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Eduard full internal kit...

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AIRES MG-131 kit; a nice big surprise! It's a cheap upgrade and the quality is very high.

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Books

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Bunrin-Do book's quality is impressive: tons of Heinkel drawings and internal pictures... pity it's written in Japanese!

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Airdoc's quality is very nice also: it completes the Bunrin-Do with a lot of external pictures.

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I could not resist.......

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Compared to my 1/32 Me109...

From the first look I can say:

- Nice boxing, all components were in segregated plastic bags; clear parts are nice and crisp.

- Instructions are clear; I prefer them to Dragon's.

- IMHO the kit is not worth the money it costs normally (I got it for 1/3 of the price); Trumpeter 1/48 Wellington is offering much more details and quality for the same price for example. The kit has no locator pins, panel lines which start and disappears, a lot of flashes and, apart from the stock cockpit area which is not bad, a lack of details: MG's quality is very poor( a pity for a bomber), Resin MG-151 from the kit have their barrels already bent, no engine details (you need to buy the CMK upgrade kit) and engines are in view in the undercarriage area... Don't misunderstand me, I'm happy with this kit, but don't expect Tamiya's quality and I don't think this is going to be an easy assembly.

Well I can't wait to start her ! I will do it in parallel with my Me109 which is a riveting process..

More to come !!!

Edited by Greif
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I'll be watching this with interest (a competitive rate of 1% over base), as I've got one of these salted away at the back of my stash, having been too scared to start it when it came out. I do love a good Flaming Coffin :)

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I'll be watching this with interest (a competitive rate of 1% over base), as I've got one of these salted away at the back of my stash, having been too scared to start it when it came out. I do love a good Flaming Coffin :)

After seeing your Mig-31 Mike, I'm surprised you could be scared by any model?!

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I finally started last night to work on the Greif.

As I 've heard so many (bad) things about gaps, filler, bulkheads off size... I decided to perform some checks on the fuselage.

For first, after having removed and cleaned the sprues attachment signs, I tried to assemble the two halfs to see if they were matching; I don't want to have a bad surprise at the last moment with the finished cockpit already in. So I have joined the top halfs, maintaining them together with paper tape... and have a look to what happen at the bottom fuselage...

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The top two halfs are joined correctly together; there is a very light deformation forward of the front gunner, but it's so light that it will be rectified by the inner additional frames and beams I will add.

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In fact, the bottom is not aligned, especially in the bomb bay area. I'm thinking to correct this with some inner location plates that will force join the two halfs together. However I will add some inner frames to give more rigidity to the fuselage, especially in the wing area.

After this, it was time to check the correct match of the canopy and the front bubble window.

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The front window is matching pretty good with the canopy and the fuselage; the canopy has a little issue with it's curve angle which doesn't match with the fuselage. That's not a big big issue, but I need to modify the curve before assembling.

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After that, I tried the front bulkhead: It was the separation wall between the cockpit and the front fuel tank; it support also the the front gunner aiming turret and all the radio /nav boxes.

The frame indeed is too big and pushed up the top fuselage skin.... to be modified!

Then I've tried the cockpit floor, with a good matching with the fuselage shape, but impossible to fit to the rear wall because of the wrong length of the floor, too long!

At this point my question was : where this the truth, where is the wrong.... So I opened the Bunrin-Do book... :book: ......

....and I realized that the cockpit was nearly... all wrong: wrong floor, incorrect location of the pilot and bomber seats, missing bulkhead... And I'm not inventing, it's from Heinkel 177 Flugzeugbuch...

In fact the first thing that has surprised me when I opened the kit was the very small space left to the gunners inside the lower gondola: if you have a look to the kit, the gondola was nearly completely closed by the cockpit floor with just a small access to it...you can imagine moving inside this space with the coverall, parachute, and more than that, fighting and firing the MG-151 which was a long weapon.

The explanation is very simple, in fact, the floor is nearly completely opened with only the mounts for the pilot and bomber seats and the flight controls; all the rest is a direct access to the gondola and the front gunner could raise up the MG-151 in between the pilot and bomber to fire downward. Here are some photos:

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View looking forward, down to the gondola. It's easy to see the pilot seat stand (cylindrical bracket on the left) and the bomber seat (on the right); the floor is completely opened in between up to the control column!

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Another view: we can see the front lower frame opened to leave free movement to the gunner. In front, the gunner window.

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View from the access hatch: there is no floor at all except for the seats.

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An example with the MG-151 raised up between the seats, firing downward.

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The kit's floor... completely wrong. The black area should be cut out and the seats re positioned.

Well this where I got yesterday night... maybe not so interesting, but I need to do this kind of job before starting to get a nice 177.

Tonight I will buy some plasticard to create the missing frames and beams.

This will be interesting to do... I have never done this kind of reconstruction... I was thinking about keeping a record of the frames I will build, like a template; maybe some of you could be interested for their Greif's .

More to come.

Cheers.

Edited by Greif
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If you keep going like this, we might end up with the definitive guide to building the kit :) Be wary of the bulkheads and innards of any kit though. They can turn a nice fitting fuselage into a poor one if they're not checked and adjusted before applying the glue. I think we've all been there ;)

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What mikes says. I always concentrate on getting bulkheads and floors to be a perfect fit before even thinking about detailing. In fact, I take the attitude that if the detail parts don't fit after I have got the structure fitting properly, then if necessary they will be replaced.

Martin

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  • 3 months later...

Hi modellers!

Some of you may have thought I gave up my Greif and put it back into the remotest point of my stash... no!!

The reason I'm not posting any wip is mainly due to lack of time for modeling during this period; but I'm still indirectly working on it gathering pictures and documents.

I found the Heinkel flight manuals which are an immense source of informations.

I can now say that my ideas are clear about how to proceed and what to detail and what to leave over (especially if not barely visible)

In the end I've decided to convert this He 177 A-3 to an A-7 "end war" standard. 😳😱

This means larger and square cockpit side and upper windows, increased wingspan, modified ailerons and front MG81 to be replaced by a twin MG81Z.

One of this 177 A-7 is famously known as the WR 550256 which has flown under American and French cocards.... Kit proposed by MPM, but it's just an A-3 standard with US or French decals .....😑

I have chosen another one : I will do the He 177 A-7 WR 550210 (Arado production) which was part of I.KG40 at Orleans (France) during June 1944. Painting scheme is the classic RLM 76 on the lower fuselage, fin and wings and RLM 71/RLM 70 on top.

My problem is that I've found only two pictures of this aircraft and the tail codes are not visible ..

Anyone has information regarding this Greif please? 🤔

More to come briefly, I promise! 😌

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  • 3 months later...

Hi modellers, time to give an update.

I'm learning slowly what is the real meaning of short run kit... this big Greif will be RFI, IMHO, for 2018 due to the quantity of work required to make these bits of plastic turning into a credible He 177 A-5.

During holidays I had the time to carry on the books, photos and drawing to organize in my head the corrections to be done and the building sequence to follow.

Let's start with the picture....

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Here is the mid turret area as provided by MPM... unfortunately it's wrong and very incomplete: the floor doesn't exist in the aircraft!

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The first thing I've done was to search for a mid fuselage drawing for the inner Stations arrangement. The bulkhead dividing the fuel tanks and the mid turret area was the Sta 27, and it's the only one provided by MPM in this area. The location is correct by the station is missing the oxy bottles ( a lot of!). So I take some marks to locate the following missing stations; I won't do all of them, I will do only the barely visible things in this area though the only thing that gives a view is the turret cupola, and it's about 1.5 cm diameter.... so very small point of view!

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Also Sta 43, the tail wheel bay bulkhead, is consistently located.

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To give you an idea about the view offered by the turret cupola... here's the turret as provided by MPM, also here many errors : the worst one is the turret transparency that has a wrong opening ( the kit is centered, while the real one had the opening offset on the left) and it's a big issue for me as I have no idea how to solve it... :weep: . ​

The other issue regards the turret shape and inner dimension, two slim, with no details.

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The good news is that inside the box, due the sprues arrangement, are provided two front an mid turrets. This gives some good base to scratch build the inner missing ring of the turret! Using the second front turret, it's easy to rework an inner ring.

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And here is the first raw result; still a lot of work to do in detailing, but the main part is ok. Note that also the turret structural ring cover is missing on the fuselage, it will be added later .

At this point it was necessary to think about giving a solid and trusty location system to the fuselage; being short run kit, there are no locator pins on the kit, sorry, I'm lying, there is one to locate the control column on the (wrong) cockpit floor :fight:

So I glue some plastic bits inside the fuselage halves, taking care of using these also to adjust the closure flaws: they are precisely located in order to force the skin up where it was too low and vice-versa... I hope this will pay in term of filler and sanding reduction... :tooth:

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The lower gondola had a fitting that was just catastrophic... now it turns better.

I then move to the stabilizer area to check the overall fitting and, TADAAAAA !!!!!!! :clown:

The slots on the tail area are misaligned, making the left stab diving and the right stab flaring.... so let's close the slots and create new corrects ones...

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At this point I decided to add the inner stabilizer spar which is missing and very visible in the tail wheel bay. The spar is materialized by the thin yellow tape, and it's slightly misaligned too.... :doh:

No comment...

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It was time to check the cockpit area for macro-issues, here is the list :

- bulkhead cockpit / fuel tank area, oversized.

- aft floor locator too low; it makes the floor lying in an aft sloppy attitude.

- front turret skin not flush with the fuselage skin (filler, a lot !)

- aft circuit breaker panel has a wrong shape

- missing front avionic frame

- wrong floor

- wrong left pilot console layout (and Eduard did so also)

- wrong gunner seat location

Well, here we are not talking about assembling anymore, but about reconstruction.

My will is to make a late A-5 version with the large square laterale windows... I don't know if I will be able to scratch build it, but I want to try!

I start recreating a missing frame of the front bubble window; but I 've realized today that I should do the complete frame and not only a part of it...

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Next step was to create the aft window frame with the new square shape to correctly distribute the structure and glass area; of course this job has been done following pictures of the real A-5 Greif.

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The thin yellow tape materializes the frames and the transparent areas.

That's all for now. I know that it seems that it's nothing, but believe me that it took me hours to rectify the fuselage and to double check everything against the original pictures.

I will alternate this build with a Revell BF109G-6 in 1/32 ( I will start the WIP shortly) to guarantee a psychological heath and mental stability... and prevent me to set this kit on fire :banghead:

Critics are, of course, more than welcome !

Happy modeling to everybody.

Cheers

Erik

Edited by Greif
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  • 1 year later...

Hello Greif,

my name is Piero Favino and I live in Novara (Italy). I have find a kit like your and I need to know, if possible, if do you have finisched yhe model and where is the topic of the second, third, four etc., parts, because I think that do you have many informations about the real aircraft ( greats are the photoes of the interior!), information that I don't have.

If possible and if do you are agree I can write you in italian and in another mail address ([email protected])?

OK, let me know, regards, Piero

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