Difference between He-111H-3 and He-111H-4

[Hugh Thomson]

Does anyone happen to know of any obvious external difference between the He-111H-3 and He-111H-4? 

 

I have the Italeri 1/72 'Battle of Britain' He-111H and the kit provides for an H-3. However, Printscale does some decals for an H-4 in France in early 1941, with a black undersurface, and I do like the idea of building an a/c engaged in night operations over the UK.

 

Sadly, I cleared my He-111 references out in a house move 3 years ago so all I have are some photos to consider on the internet. It doesn't look like there are external differences but I don't trust the internet and bitter experience has taught me to check and check again before I commit myself.

 

Thanks

[Graham Boak]

As built, the H-3 didn't have the forward-firing gun position in the gondola, witness the late-production H-3s sold to Romania or the H-3s operated by KGr100.  This was before the armoured position fitted to the H-6.  However, either many H-3s were fitted with this position or there are a lot of mis-captioned photographs.  Possibly both.  Rely on photographs of the aircraft you wish to build, but I suspect that the Italeri kit will provide the forward gun position, and this should be fine for an H-4.  Whether it was actually manned/gunned during night operations is another matter, as it would seem to be pretty useless when it's dark.  The same applies to any of the side-gun positions which were fitted to many in-service Heinkels - presumably in the later stages of the day raids. 

[Hugh Thomson]

Thanks. Just what I needed.