Matchbox 1/72 Heinkel He 115

[Stew Dapple]

Hello gents  

 

I recently scored a Matchbox He 115 from ebay for a very reasonable price, given what they sometimes go for. I'd like to do a quick build on this for a few reasons; I think it's a nice-looking aircraft and the kit itself is comparatively simple so I hope to be able to get it finished in time for the Scottish Nationals Model show in Perth later this month (as a representative example of the RLM 72/73/65 Maritime Scheme for the Sovereign Hobbies stand, not to take part in any competitions, and assuming we have room on the stand for it). I built this kit a couple of times as a kid when it first came out and I recall it being a pretty straightforward build.

 

Here's the kit:

 

 

Looks like mice have been at the box end:

 

 

Still, all the parts appear to be present, though a few are off the sprues:

 

 

Also included are a rather faded set of instructions:

 

 

There is a speckling of coughed-up box dust on the parts, courtesy of the mice:

 

 

Those will be getting a wash and a bath in IPA before we go much further. The loose parts, clear parts, display stand and transfers are in a sealy-bag:

 

 

Though the transfers have wed over the years to their protective sheet. No matter, a dimly-remembered idea led me to search the transfer stash... where I found these:

 

 

 A more recent set of instructions with no mouse bits on them, and two sets of transfers which look viable  

 

Also, the ultimate gift from a forgotten Past Me; the Eduard mask set for this kit:

 

 

Anyway only a couple of weeks before the show so I need to get a shove on, it will be a very basic level modelling to say the least, with no additions or corrections...

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

 

 

 

[GREG DESTEC]

Cool 😎 

 

I always enjoy a Matchbox build.

 

cheers Greg 👍

[bar side]

Nice to see this kit again, looking forward to your build

[Andre B]

I had forgotten that this kit also had Swedish decals. Following with interest!

 

Cheers / André

[zigster]

I've always planned to do one from Norway. Good luck with your project!

[amblypygid]

I had never heard of this type before, but it reminds me of a Do-17 on floats (no bad thing), mated with the wings from a He-111. And with the possibility of Swedish markings to boot, how splendid.

[Courageous]

Ooo, a floatplane. I'm in. 

Sea base??? 

 

Stuart

[Antti_K]

Oooh...original boxing with Finnish markings. I built one of these as a kid. Now I have the Revell boxing in the stash. I'm looking at this with great interest.

 

Antti

[Tomoshenko]

I remember building one of these as a kid and hanging it from my bedroom ceiling. Great stuff.

[Stew Dapple]

19 hours ago, GREG DESTEC said:

Cool 😎 

 

I always enjoy a Matchbox build.

 

cheers Greg 👍

 

Thanks Greg, nice to have you along mate  

 

19 hours ago, bar side said:

Nice to see this kit again, looking forward to your build

 

Thanks mate, it's a fondly-remembered kit for many, shame it isn't currently re-issued by Revell but I'm sure they will do so at some point

 

19 hours ago, Andre B said:

I had forgotten that this kit also had Swedish decals. Following with interest!

 

Cheers / André

 

Thanks André - I hope to build the version used by the Luftwaffe in the Weserübung operation so the Swedish transfers will be spare, PM me with your address if you want them

 

18 hours ago, zigster said:

I've always planned to do one from Norway. Good luck with your project!

 

Thanks  There are markings for a Norweigian He 115 on the DP Casper transfer set for Operation Weserübung - if you can find it anywhere, it's been out of production for some years now.

 

18 hours ago, amblypygid said:

I had never heard of this type before, but it reminds me of a Do-17 on floats (no bad thing), mated with the wings from a He-111. And with the possibility of Swedish markings to boot, how splendid.

 

It does have quite a spindly, dragonfly-esque quality, doesn't it?  

 

17 hours ago, Courageous said:

Ooo, a floatplane. I'm in. 

Sea base??? 

 

Stuart

 

Thanks  But you are having a laugh. Though I might, eventually, ask Jamie to do a base for me if the kit turns out worthy of one...  

 

10 hours ago, Antti_K said:

Oooh...original boxing with Finnish markings. I built one of these as a kid. Now I have the Revell boxing in the stash. I'm looking at this with great interest.

 

Antti

 

Thanks Annti  The Finnish markings are a little old-looking but I think they would be usable - PM me with your address if you want them as I won't need them  

 

9 hours ago, Tomoshenko said:

I remember building one of these as a kid and hanging it from my bedroom ceiling. Great stuff.

 

Thanks Tom, I reckon there were aspects of our childhood that were near-identical  

 

Nothing done so far apart from fitting the seats to the cockpit floor - I had a late shift yesterday followed by an early today and the dog has been a bit despondent this week so I made sure he wasn't suffering a lack of attention and didn't get much else done. As I'm not 'doing up' the cockpit I would like to install the crew, but one of them has lost a leg and to be honest I never really liked the basic Matchbox pilots, to this day the face reminds me of the Dandy comic character Bully Beef. I'll have a root through the spares box and leave the clear parts off as long as possible and see how it goes...

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[Ventora3300]

Good choice for a build, Stew. I found this to be an excellent kit which fits together very nicely. Watch out for the float secondary angled struts which are slightly different lengths front and back and have little pins on the fuselage ends which are easily missed when cutting from the sprue.  I found that glueing the main legs and struts to the floats (just a depression at the float end), struts angled inwards, waiting a bit then glueing to the wings and popping the strut ends into the fuselage holes with tweezers, while the glue is still setting, worked best. Good luck. All the best. Mike.

[Courageous]

2 hours ago, Stew Dapple said:

But you are having a laugh. Though I might, eventually, ask Jamie to do a base for me if the kit turns out worthy of one...

Yes, I'm sure that between yourself and Jamie you could make a decent sea base .

2 hours ago, Stew Dapple said:

but one of them has lost a leg

Our Mr Bader was amputee...

 

Stuart

[zigster]

Thanks for the info re: Norwegian Heinkel 115. Maybe one day.:-)

I believe there were some articles in forums (can't remember where) describing various changes in design for other (than Luftwaffe) customers.

That was with 1:48 kit released. Plenty of usefull info, if U can find it

[Ventora3300]

2 hours ago, zigster said:

Thanks for the info re: Norwegian Heinkel 115. Maybe one day.:-)

I believe there were some articles in forums (can't remember where) describing various changes in design for other (than Luftwaffe) customers.

That was with 1:48 kit released. Plenty of usefull info, if U can find it

One of the following probably - worth a read to the end but makes your head spin.

 

 

Edited April 12, 2019 by Ventora3300

[Stew Dapple]

On 4/12/2019 at 7:29 AM, Courageous said:

Yes, I'm sure that between yourself and Jamie you could make a decent sea base .

 

If Jamie was doing it, yes  

 

On 4/12/2019 at 7:29 AM, Courageous said:

Our Mr Bader was amputee...

 

Joachim-Friedrich Huth would be a better choice, he flew for the Luftwaffe so right air force, and he only had one leg, so would match the kit crewman (though I'm not sure if it would be the correct leg missing)... but in any case, I liberated a couple of these chaps from the Airfix Gladiators in my stash:

 

 

Sorry for the blurry but I can't get a better picture. I mean I can't be bothered to get a better picture, of course.

 

There follows a rather pedantic little paragraph, please feel free to skip this unless you are really obsessed by incredibly small details on very small plastic figures:

 

This is the crew figure provided and he appears to be a scaled-down and modified version of the pilot provided in the 1/24 Bf109E kit. He's not correct for the RAF versions of the Gladiator as he is wearing the Luftwaffe early-war kapok-filled life-jacket and Luftwaffe flying boots - I'm guessing Airfix's intention was that the be used for the Finnish markings provided in the kit, but I'm not sure that is correct either as while the Germans might well have provided flying gear to the Finnish Air Force prior to and during the Continuation War I don't think they did during the earlier Winter War when the Gladiator depicted in the kit flew, and also it was a Swedish volunteer group who flew those Gladiators so unless the Germans also provided flying gear to neutral Sweden he's probably not correct for that either.

 

However he is a perfect match for a crew member of an early-war He 115  The only question is will painting and installing him and his colleagues be worth the time it will take to do so.

 

I got my paints sorted too:

 

 

... and spent a couple of hours masking the clear parts with the Eduard set:

 

 

It wouldn't have taken a couple of hours if I'd done it in one fell swoop, but I was wandering about and doing other stuff inbetween. The Eduard set doesn't fit perfectly with some of the panes as moulded, a couple on the nose-side sections needed trimming, but it's still an invaluable investment for a kit with this many windows.

 

I got the newly-masked clear parts and the interior parts sprayed in RLM02:

 

 

Last thing yesterday I got most of the sub-assemblies er, assembled. Or perhaps sub-assembled. 

 

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[Courageous]

4 hours ago, Stew Dapple said:

The only question is will painting and installing him and his colleagues be worth the time it will take to do so.

That is entirely down to you. From my point of view, if the main subject warrants a pilot, then it should have one. So, seeing that you're not doing a sea base or flying, no pilot required but always good to expand ones skill base...

Good progress by the way, especially with the masking.

 

Stuart

Edited April 15, 2019 by Courageous

[Stew Dapple]

On 4/15/2019 at 12:18 PM, Courageous said:

That is entirely down to you. From my point of view, if the main subject warrants a pilot, then it should have one. So, seeing that you're not doing a sea base or flying, no pilot required but always good to expand ones skill base...

 

Thanks Stuart, you make some good points there - one other good reason for fitting out the model with crew is that it will mitigate the lack of detail in the interior, which in this case is limited to a pair of armchairs and a floor; detailing the interior would be perhaps equally time-consuming as painting the crew would be and additionally I don't have any references for the interior to use as a guide. There is an etched set available which would go some way to ameliorating this, though you could argue this is akin to putting lipstick on a pig  

 

In short, then; I painted the crew:

 

 

In between doing this, I fitted the wings and tailplanes:

 

 

Some filler was needed at the wing-roots and to be honest later it became clear I should have spent a bit more time fixing this, but hey ho. I fitted the major float struts:

 

 

... and the clear parts - the nose parts in particular did not fit terribly well, and I broke the barrel off the rear-cockpit MG almost straight away :

 

 

I've got into the habit of 'black-basing' my models but have found that it is not particularly beneficial with low-contrast camouflage schemes, and since the original purpose was to have an example of this particular low-contrast camouflage scheme I decided to use a neutral grey base - enamels don't usually need a primer coat, but it is useful not as an aid to adhesion but so that the topcoats will be applied on a regular colour and not three colours of plastic:

 

 

I gave it a couple of hours to cure (actually I had a trip to the dentists, but allow me a façade of professionalism here please) and applied the RLM65 to the undersides:

 

 

I'll mask the undersides tomorrow and hopefully can get this finished in time for next weekend so long as I don't lollygag as I am prone to...  

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

 

 

[Dermo245]

Nice work on that one and the crew look great 👍

 

Dermot

[Courageous]

8 minutes ago, Stew Dapple said:

ameliorating

...is that type of language allowed on this forum ( I had to look-up that word) .

Crew painted a treat and I understand their use. The old Matchbox kit seems to be scrubbing-up rather nicely.

 

Stuart

[Jonners]

Excellent! A strangely attractive type, and always good to see a Matchbox model.

 

I was looking at a real He115 at the Sola air museum near Stavanger in Norway only last summer. The airframe isn't complete, but I think it's the only survivor and, IIRC, was salvaged from the water near the museum, which is housed in the former German seaplane hangar.

 

Jon

[Stew Dapple]

On 4/22/2019 at 4:15 PM, Dermo245 said:

Nice work on that one and the crew look great 👍...

 

Thanks mate  

 

On 4/22/2019 at 4:21 PM, Courageous said:

The old Matchbox kit seems to be scrubbing-up rather nicely...

 

It's not a bad kit, but it's a bit primitive by today's standards; that said it is probably the best available option, I haven't seen the ex-FROG kit in the flesh (as it were) but from pictures of the sprues it looks a bit basic as well  

 

On 4/22/2019 at 6:52 PM, Jonners said:

Excellent! A strangely attractive type, and always good to see a Matchbox model.

 

I was looking at a real He115 at the Sola air museum near Stavanger in Norway only last summer. The airframe isn't complete, but I think it's the only survivor and, IIRC, was salvaged from the water near the museum, which is housed in the former German seaplane hangar...

 

Thanks Jon, yes you are right, I googled the pictures before starting and it was useful in that it indicated the turtle-decking under the canopy to be one of the camouflage colours and not, as I had imagined, RLM02. Norway has been a bit of a treasure trove for Luftwaffe types over the last few decades, I know an FW-190, a Ju88A, an He111 and (I think) most of a Ju52, He-115 and Blackburn Skua have all been recovered from various places and fjords, some very interesting pictures online too.

 

Well I got the undersides masked but it took me longer than I expected and the model won't be ready for Perth this weekend, this isn't really that annoying as I'm not even sure we would have had space on the stand for models this year, but it is vexing in the sense that I rushed the model so far and consequently did not give the build all the care and attention that it deserves (in other words I rushed it and bodged it, for nothing). Never mind. Here's the undersides masked:

 

 

There is also an ominous rattling sound when I move the model... given the scarcity of internal parts I suspect it is one of the crew, my money being on the nose-gunner/bomb-aimer, as he did not have any sort of location point other than being glued onto a concave section of floor. Oh well, it will give an air of suspense and excitement when I get to remove the canopy masking  

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[Stew Dapple]

Since I no longer had to rush to get this finished for the show, I took the opportunity to re-do the wing-root join with some more filler and sanding - it's still not perfect but it will do for me - before spraying the RLM72:

 

 

Next I'll mask off the splinter pattern before adding the RLM73...

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[Nikolay Polyakov]

Well done, Stew! 👍 The crew looks fantastic, it’s a perfect work for this scale. I’ll need to practice my skills to reach this level of the quality as yours.

 

Cheers! 🙂

[GREG DESTEC]

Nice work on the old girl Stew 👍

 

Looking good, I hope your bomb aimed reappears, when the masks come off 🙏

 

cheers Greg

[Stew Dapple]

Thanks very much gents, hopefully the crew will all be present when the masking comes off, if the bomb-aimer is AWOL I'll just have to prise the nose-glazing off and hopefully shake him loose that way, and perhaps reinstall him later.

 

I got the camouflage pattern masked:

 

 

... and sprayed the RLM73:

 

 

Once that was dry the masking was removed:

 

 

... and the various other parts - engines, floats, struts, mass balances etc - fitted. 

 

 

 

 

The float struts and ladders seemed a bit short for their intended purpose which is odd as I had been forewarned by Mike to have a care, but we are where we are and I simply superglued them into position hiding as much of the shortfall as possible. 

 

All things being well I shall crack on with the transfers tomorrow...  

 

Cheers,

 

Stew