229 Messerschmitt Bf109K

[John]

I came across the Airfix "Aircraft of the Aces" boxing of this kit. It isn't a kit I've ever built in any of its incarnations so this should be a bit of fun. 

I'll post up photos when I get some time. 

John 

[fightersweep]

I've got a K-4 nearly finished myself. Built several over the years, and I still regard it as a nice little kit. I think you'll enjoy building this one. About the only K-4 available for many years and I understand it's pretty good on the shape too, although if I remember correctly @Graham Boak pointed out that the prop rotates the wrong way. 

 

Look forward to seeing your progress.

 

Steve

[John]

Box top - definitely had one at some point:

 

 

Classic Heller :

 

 

 

I'm no expert on the late model 109s but purely as a kit this looks nice. I'll remember to reverse the prop.

 

John

[mike romeo]

Really wanting to see this one progress.

 

Rgds

 

Martin

[Troy Smith]

1 hour ago, John said:

I'm no expert on the late model 109s but purely as a kit this looks nice. I'll remember to reverse the prop.

 

well, here's K-4, showing the prop, so you can check.

 

along with many other details.

IIRC Heller did two Bf109K kits, one from the late 60's/early 70's that was from the era when K were though to look like G-6's, and was poor, and then the above kit was tooled,  which was apparently rather good, and speaking as a teenage 109 obsessive,  it looks good to me in the main shapes, though I have never seen a K with a bomb.

 

Masses of K pics here if you need

https://www.asisbiz.com/Bf-109K.html

 

box top, 

 

I suspect the kit decals are supposed to be this,  which has been suggested to be Hartmann's,  though further research indicates he never flew the K-4 is it's based on old discredited information,  see here 

http://falkeeins.blogspot.com/2010/06/hartmanns-last-109s.html

 

there is this K-4,  with the tulip nose,  though this is thought to be in red

 

 

But there are plenty of fairly generic looking K's as the link will show. 

 

if you can find a white 4,  here's a JG4 one with a nifty black/white/black RD band which is pretty eye catching.

 

the other side and couple more JG4 pics here

https://www.asisbiz.com/il2/Bf-109K/JG4.html

 

hope of interest/use....

 

 

[JOCKNEY]

Great stuff my 109 knowledge is shocking so I'm looking forward to learning lots in this build.

 

Best of luck.

 

cheers Pat

 

 

[PeterB]

Interesting. So I guess this means that the "Airfix" K in my stash is in fact the same kit as my old Heller K sitting in pieces in my "refurbishmeint" box? I always thought it was a nice kit, but mine met with an accident a few years back.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Edited December 13, 2020 by PeterB

[Graham Boak]

That rather depends whether your Heller kit was the old old Heller kit or the new old Heller kit.   The Airfix release was indeed the Heller tooling.  Or so I am told - I didn't buy it because I was and still am working through my stash of Heller 109s.  I know that there are better ones available now - but also worse.

[Troy Smith]

21 minutes ago, PeterB said:

Interesting. So I guess this means that the "Airfix" K in my stash is in fact the same kit as my old Heller K sitting in pieces in my "refurbishmeint" box? I always thought it was a nice kit, but mine met with an accident a few years back.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

 

3 minutes ago, Graham Boak said:

That rather depends whether your Heller kit was the old old Heller kit or the new old Heller kit.   The Airfix release was indeed the Heller tooling.  Or so I am told - I didn't buy it because I was and still am working through my stash of Heller 109s.  I know that there are better ones available now - but also worse.

Quite a few Heller kits ended up in Airfix boxes in the Humbrol/Heller era,  the Hurricane was ain a BBMF flight set, and I have a Heller Tempest in an Airfix box.

As to which Heller K is which,  the old kit is basically a G-6,  MG bulges and no wide upper wing bulges would be the obvious points.   

The details of what the late war bf109's really looked like only started to be widely understood in the 1970's, the first real book on the subject is John Beamans's Last Of The Eagles from 1976

 

Which was a very impressive book for what was known at the time,  it does miss some aspects of the late war 109's, the main being the differences between the different factories (the WNF/Diana plant cowling vs the Erla cowling)  but list the main recognition points of the K.

Bear in mind the link to the Asisbiz K pages has maybe 100 more photos of the K series that was available at the time.   The Monogram monograph on the Bf109K  had pretty much every known K photo at the time,  

 

 

 

 scans of it are here

https://jagdwaffe.weebly.com/bf109k-monogram-close-up-no16.html

 

if you have a look at these, and then at the Asisbiz image galleries,  it will show very quickly how many more photos have been publicised since the above books came out.

I mention this as the two above were obscure, specialist publications I bought by mail order in 1982,  as a somewhat obsessed teenage 109 buff, so many years later seeing all the new photos of K's including a couple of colour images and even a clip of colour film was/is a still quite a treat, as the above two book were read obsessively 'back then'

I think I found out about these from an Article in Plastic Aircraft Modelling that had an in depth feature on converting the Revell G-10 into a K-4,  (which I started and never finished, but is still in a box...) 

 

What is of note is that in the late 70's decent kits finally were made of these late war 109's, the 1/48th Revell G-10 and the new tool Heller K-4 being examples,  and I suspect the above book was the reason.  

 

Apologies for rambling off @John,  just trying to put my posts into modelling and research history context,  which I know is of some some interest having seen many of your model paint archaeology threads over the years.

 

 

[Graham Boak]

My first encounter was in an IMPS mag, either the USQ or Canadian Random Thoughts and perhaps the latter. I think the drawing was by George Hopp, but memory could be imperfect.  This was perhaps a couple of years before Beaman's book and the 1/48 kit.  I'm not sure whether Hitchcock's 109 Gallery had this right but if so this would be another early appearance.

 

The other now-known feature is that the bulged cowling doesn't bulge anywhere near as much on the starboard side, as most of it is for the larger supercharger on the port side.  I don't know which of the current kits match this: I expect Fine Molds and suspect others.  Ambiguity deliberate.  It is interesting that most of the early books have a pretty good idea of which engine went into these late aircraft, but no idea of what that meant as far as any necessary changes.

 

I thought the early Heller K attempt was a G-14 given the (awful) attempt at the later fin and rudder.  Yes, I now know that some G-6s had this, and some G-14s didn't.  After all, Heller had already done a G (or even two, but one was called an F).

[Troy Smith]

58 minutes ago, Graham Boak said:

My first encounter was in an IMPS mag, either the USQ or Canadian Random Thoughts and perhaps the latter. I think the drawing was by George Hopp, but memory could be imperfect. 

I think Random thoughts, and George Hopp are correct, but that was specialist territory.

 

1 hour ago, Graham Boak said:

This was perhaps a couple of years before Beaman's book

1976 AFAIK

1 hour ago, Graham Boak said:

and the 1/48 kit.

The Revell kit was late 1978.   I suspect this was was someones pet project at Revell, as all the other 1/48th kits of the same era , Spitfire, P-40E and Mustang, had raised panel line detail, and the Bf109 had engraved panelling, which was rare back then.

the 48th revell kit is still a decent kit, seems the exhaust are slightly to high in position, and it is slightly too long, the length is not noticeable, the exhaust only if you really look.

I think  the Revell kit was based both on the G-10 that was at Planes of fame at Chino, CA,  and the Beaman book, it certainly matches the Beaman book drawings.

A while back someone claimed that the 48th Revell made the bulges symmetrical,  which is not true.

1 hour ago, Graham Boak said:

The other now-known feature is that the bulged cowling doesn't bulge anywhere near as much on the starboard side, as most of it is for the larger supercharger on the port side.  I don't know which of the current kits match this: I expect Fine Molds and suspect others. 

the 72nd Revell G-10 i think makes a decent stab at it, being pretty much a scaled down version of their 48th G-10.   I know there is debate regarding the 1/48th kits,  I saw some waling and gnashing of teeth over how Eduard have done the cowling.  I don't have the late Eduard 109's,  I almost got the Erla G-10 in a sale,  so I can't comment.   When the right price opportunity arises I'll get the relevant Eduard kits,  I have all the others.... 

 

back to the 2nd tool Heller K, it always seems highly rated.

1 hour ago, Graham Boak said:

I thought the early Heller K attempt was a G-14 given the (awful) attempt at the later fin and rudder.  Yes, I now know that some G-6s had this, and some G-14s didn't. 

having recently got the Mermet and Ehrengardt 109 book published by Caretake,  it seems even the Germans didn't always know the difference between a G-6 and a G-14,  even the Werk nummer does not always make it clear if it was a G-6 or G-14,  from a initial read,  it seems that a G-14 has to have MW50 system, everything else varies. 

This does not apply to the G-6/AS vs G-14/AS .

1 hour ago, Graham Boak said:

It is interesting that most of the early books have a pretty good idea of which engine went into these late aircraft, but no idea of what that meant as far as any necessary changes.

A perfect example is the 1966 Profile of the Bf109G/K, which even has photos of the 'refined cowl' but make no mention of this feature, but has profiles of a "K-4" which is tall tail G6/14 

 

17 hours ago, John said:

I'm no expert on the late model 109s

as you can see, it's rather confusing....  one good thing,  while working out if such and such is a G6 or 14, or if a G-10 is from one of 3 plants and what batch is slightly more fun than a migraine, from photos the K-4 is consistent, there were a few K-4's built by Erla, which have the Erla cowling, but I think there is only one photo of an Erla K-4 known,  and that is not in unit markings. Phew.

[PeterB]

Certainly is confusing guys. AFAIK mine is the 1980 boxing which Scalemates says had "changed parts", so I would guess the Airfix kit is the same one, but who knows! Must see if I can find it. I can certainly remember one or two reviews saying it was good.

 

Apologies John, but by now you will have seen this sort of conversation develop on a number of other "innocent parties" build threads a few times, and at least this time it is just about related to your build! 

 

Cheers

 

Pete.

Edited December 13, 2020 by PeterB

[dogsbody]

Yeah, that prop is definitely off. The rotation is right, but the blade profile is off, no matter which side you look at.

 

 

 

 

 

Chris

[Troy Smith]

5 hours ago, dogsbody said:

Yeah, that prop is definitely off. The rotation is right, but the blade profile is off, no matter which side you look at.

 

Hmm, most odd, looks like this upright blade is reversed compared to the lower two.   Would cutting it off and turning it around solve this? 

 

[PeterB]

This is the prop on my old Heller kit.

The spinner pretty much covers the roots and the anit-clockwise rotation seems correct. Admittedly the blade profile could be better but it does not look that bad to me. Must dig out my Airfix one and see what that is like. My hands were a lot steadier then judging by the spiral! The blue triangle on the lower right blade is a reflection as I had just washed it.

 

And this is the side view.

Not sure if I used the kit decs or ones from my stock but the swastika looks a bit big! As for the "bulges" they are almost invisible. I believe it had an "Erma/Galland" type canopy.

 

Pete

Edited December 14, 2020 by PeterB

[Troy Smith]

4 minutes ago, PeterB said:

Admittedly the blade profile could be better but it does not look that bad to me.

It may just be the photo, but, again, the uppermost blade looks twisted around 180 degrees.  

I also note the JG77 red heart badge,....

 

 

6 minutes ago, PeterB said:

As to the "bulges" they are almost invisible.

The bulges are surprisingly subtle in real life, the bulges were a smoothing exercise,  as with the G-5/6, the introduction of the cowl mounted MG-131 12.7 guns required the addition of those bulges to cover the gun breeches.

With engine upgrade to the DB605 AS or D, these introduced a larger supercharger, which required a new engine bearer on the port side, so the new 'refined cowl' was introduced,  and the bulge was spread out. 

the extent of the port bulge is well shown here,  as it been sketched in,  the rear faring is obvious, the front part blends in,  ans as such is quite hard to see.

 

as the starboard side was the same underneath as the G-6, the starboard bulge was smaller, as it just needed to cover the gun breech.

as your model is JG77, here's what was probably in the Heller kit,  white1

 

and the other side from JG77

 

Note how subtle the bulge shape is. 

 

 

there is a walkround here,  of the ex Chino Planes of Fame G-10

http://109lair.hobbyvista.com/walkaround/611943/611943.htm

where you can see that bulge is quite subtle.  apart from close up's from the rear.

 

  The 3 surviving G-10's are all from the same factory, but they happen to be the same cowl type as used on nearly all the K-4's. 

 

The Erla cowling is different, and there is not Erla built G-10 in preservation, and it is only recently we have had kits with the Erla cowling. 

this is the only photo of an Erala K-4 AFAIK

https://me109.info/display.php?from=site&lang=en&auth=e&name=&fotonummer=4814

 

I hope this is not to distracting @John  

[PeterB]

Thanks Troy,

 

Although I have several books on the 109, I must admit I have not read them recently, and was unaware that there were different cowlings, though I did read that there were variations on the canopy as I mentioned. One of the nice things about this forum is that you often get a lot of useful info from other modellers - though I guess it can sometimes be a bit overwhelming!

 

Cheers

 

Pete

[John]

On 12/13/2020 at 8:56 PM, PeterB said:

Certainly is confusing guys. AFAIK mine is the 1980 boxing which Scalemates says had "changed parts", so I would guess the Airfix kit is the same one, but who knows! Must see if I can find it. I can certainly remember one or two reviews saying it was good.

 

Apologies John, but by now you will have seen this sort of conversation develop on a number of other "innocent parties" build threads a few times, and at least this time it is just about related to your build! 

 

Cheers

 

Pete.

No problem, the more the merrier 😀

 

Anyway, not much time for kitbashing this last week but some small progress.

 

Interestingly, there are very few locating pins in this kit, only 2 on the fuselage halves and none on the wings:

 

 

A dive into the spares cache uncovered an AZ 109 prop - and wheels:

 

 

Those should improve the look.

 

John

[John]

Main airframe bits put together - fit's not bad but there are areas around the wing roots that will need a bit of work:

 

 

 

 

AZ prop in the Heller spinner:

 

 

John

[AaCee26]

Hi Graham and Troy,

 

On 12/13/2020 at 5:52 PM, Graham Boak said:

My first encounter was in an IMPS mag, either the USQ or Canadian Random Thoughts and perhaps the latter. I think the drawing was by George Hopp, but memory could be imperfect.  This was perhaps a couple of years before Beaman's book and the 1/48 kit.  I'm not sure whether Hitchcock's 109 Gallery had this right but if so this would be another early appearance.

According to Beaman's "Last of the Eagles" (1976, I have checked) they were first published by Mr. Hopp in RT 1969. Hitchcock's "109" Gallery from §973 might have been their first appearence in a book although he mixes Erla-canopy + tall tail + original G-6 bulged planes as G-10. His first streamlined cowl variant is G-14. Heinz Nowarra's "Messerschmitt 109 - a Famous German Fighter" from 1963 has teo pictures with streamlined cowlings recognized different K-subtypes but not mentioned in the text.

 

On 12/13/2020 at 2:27 AM, Troy Smith said:

IIRC Heller did two Bf109K kits, one from the late 60's/early 70's that was from the era when K were though to look like G-6's, and was poor, and then the above kit was tooled,  which was apparently rather good, and speaking as a teenage 109 obsessive, 

The later Heller K was long time the most accurate kit of any G/K in the market. Basic shape was there although it was critized to have too little wing sweep. Easier than turn the wing was take care of the slightly too wide wing tip and narrow the wing from the leading edge. Another issues were too round fuselage cross section after the canopy and wheel wells, which are too far outboard.

 

On 12/13/2020 at 7:31 PM, Troy Smith said:

the 72nd Revell G-10 i think makes a decent stab at it, being pretty much a scaled down version of their 48th G-10. 

If it just have been base on their 1/48 kit! Unfortunately it has too streamlined front fuselage having both the prop and exhausts located too high and having shapewise strange prop. It is quite sound behind the firewall but unfortunately pretty hopeless in front of it.

 

Cheers,

 

AaCee