Heinkel 219 A-7 Uhu Aft Fuselage Vertical Gun Ports

[Curt B]

Hi All,

 

I'm working on my 1/48 Tamiya Heinkel 219 A-7 Uhu, and have been thrilled with the engineering and fit, particularly for a kit whose mold is 20ish years old, plus the design of the built-in forward weight to make sure it sits on the nose wheel when completed!  All of this is amazing for a kit this old, and the subject being unusual but highly interesting!   I can't wait to see it done, with painting and weathering.  It's gonna be HUGE for a 1/48 scale airplane...not even sure where I'm going to find room to display it!!  And I thought my 1/48 Tamiya P-38s were big!  LOL

 

Anyway, on to my question,  The kit includes two vertical firing guns in the aft part of the fuselage, but I've noticed that photos of completed Uhus don't seem too show those guns on display, and in fact, it appears that the openings where the gun barrels would protrude through the aircraft skin are always smoothly faired over, apparently with putty of some sort, but the instructions don't address this at all.  Am I missing something?  Is there any additional part that I'm just not seeing that include those openings as faired over?  Or does everyone just use putty of one kind or other to eliminate those openings?  Seems like a VERY common modification, but I've never seen a reference to it at all.  Thanks for any info that anyone may have!

Edited October 29, 2022 by Curt B

[dov]

Actually:

The guns you mention are the Schräge Musik, as called in German. This installation was sometimes omitted. Depending on the operational task.

I used it, when I built my model. It became a tail sitter. Nice model anyway. I used a resin cockpit, but not neccessary. 

In reality,  this aircraft was heavily underpowered. The Mosquito could find it by rado signals echo and they often had a close run. The time, when this aircraft was operative, in the sky it was a hell.

After war reports from British test pilots like Eric Brown are quite realistic.

Happy modelling 

[Werdna]

35 minutes ago, Curt B said:

Hi All,

 

I'm working on my 1/48 Tamiya Heinkel 219 A-7 Uhu, and have been thrilled with the engineering and fit, particularly for a kit whose mold is 20ish years old, plus the design of the built-in forward weight to make sure it sits on the nose wheel when completed!  All of this is amazing for a kit this old, and the subject being unusual but highly interesting!   I can't wait to see it done, with painting and weathering.  It's gonna be HUGE for a 1/48 scale airplane...not even sure where I'm going to find room to display it!!  And I thought my 1/48 Tamiya P-38s were big!  LOL

 

Anyway, on to my question,  The kit includes two vertical firing guns in the aft part of the fuselage, but I've noticed that photos of completed Uhus don't seem too show those guns on display, and in fact, it appears that the openings where the gun barrels would protrude through the aircraft skin are always smoothly faired over, apparently with putty of some sort, but the instructions don't address this at all.  Am I missing something?  Is there any additional part that I'm just not seeing that include those openings as faired over?  Or does everyone just use putty of one kind or other to eliminate those openings?  Seems like a VERY common modification, but I've never seen a reference to it at all.  Thanks for any info that anyone may have!

 

Without knowing which particular examples with covered gun ports you are referring to, it's difficult to comment,  but certainly the NASM example has the ports visible.  

 

It's a great kit though.  I built one last year, the RFI is on here somewhere. 

[SafetyDad]

Hi Curt

 

I'll need to check my references, but my recollection is that the Schräge Musik cannon were very often deleted (or never fitted) at unit level (perhaps because of their weight). As @dov pointed out above, it's generally accepted that the 219 was underpowered, so saving weight would have been a priority. Eric Brown was pretty uncomplimentary about the aircraft's performance. The Uhu was very heavily armed without these fuselage guns, and many machines also had some of the underfuselage cannon removed as well. 

 

The NASM machine is very unusual in that it has a third set of shoulder straps (visible in the top left pic below), lap straps (middle right pic), perspex roof panel and a plywood floor piece installed near to where the Schräge Musik would have been fitted. The purpose of this is not entirely clear - perhaps a flight test station? 

 

 

 

From here

 

 

Images posted solely for the purpose of research, and intentionally slightly distorted to discourage further replication

 

HTH

SD

[Curt B]

Excellent info, gentlemen, thanks so much!  I'm thinking, now, that I'll probably do my Uhu with the ports in place, but without the guns.  Not that I'm so terribly anal about historical accuracy, but my guess is that there probably had to be some real life WWII examples where the guns were left off the plane, but the gun ports were left as-is, due to circumstances.  Nice to see the NASM example painted and displayed like the plane I am going to do!  Thanks again, guys!

[Werdna]

3 hours ago, Curt B said:

Nice to see the NASM example painted and displayed like the plane I am going to do!

 

Same scheme as the one I chose.  I found my old RFI here: 

 

[Curt B]

@Werdna:  Thank you, sir, for posting your build thread.