images by Richard Briggs

Starting with the excellent 1/48 scale Tamiya Heinkel He 219A-7, I then added figures from Verlinden and Reheat Models and a Verlinden refueling cart to create this vignette entitled “Der Sieger und der Besiegte”, which roughly translated means “victor and the vanquished.”

I began with the cockpit for which I used the excellent detail set from Aires. To make this set fit into Tamiya’s Heinkel, I had to first grind down the fuselage sides with my Dremel and then scrape the remaining plastic with a curved X-acto blade until the plastic was almost thin enough to see through. In so doing, I lost the neatest feature of the Tamiya kit: the use of a die-cast weight as the cockpit floor to balance the model on its tricycle undercarriage. Consequently, I had to weight the fuselage and the engine nacelles, as the fuselage weights alone were now too close to the centre of gravity to properly compensate for the model’s natural tail heaviness.

I spent many hours fiddling with the various Aires and Tamiya pieces ensuring that they all fitted together as a seamless whole. And here’s a tip that makes the process somewhat endurable: when test fitting the resin parts, use white glue to temporarily hold them together. This glue is just strong enough to position them without in any way damaging the parts when it is removed with water.

Of course, spending a lot of time on the cockpit demands that the canopy be crystal clear. I dipped the canopy sections in Future floor wax to get that so glossy, it reflects light look. I decided to try BlackMagic vinyl canopy masks by Cutting Edge. As advertised, they fit perfectly except for the compound curve of the windscreen; I had to use Tamiya masking tape for this part. When removing the BlackMagic masks, Cutting Edge quite rightly advises against using an X-acto blade. I simply used a flat wooden toothpick with a beveled edge.

Having spent all this time on the cockpit area, it behooved me to make sure the rest of the model was up to snuff. This involved using etched parts from the Eduard He 219 set plus screening (for the supercharger intakes), M.V. lenses, and some scratch building.

I scratch built the brake line plumbing, the torque link on the nose gear, and the actuating arms for the cowl flaps. The making of the last two items was made infinitely easier by using Waldron’s sub-miniature punch and something called The Chopper by Northwest Short Line. This tool consists of a razor blade mounted on an arm that is in turn affixed to a masonite base. When it is combined with adjustable plastic angles ranging from 90º to 30º, you can turn out parts of the same length in fairly short order, which in my case are 14 actuating arms of .010 rod times two.

Another indispensable tool is Precision Stix, which are produced by Mike Crawford. As the Heinkel 219 has supercharger intakes and heating ports in the leading edge of both wings, their edges had to be blended when the wing halves are joined. Both openings are only a couple millimeters wide making it impossible to fit your finger inside. Complicating matters was my plan to fit screening in to the superchargers and an etched piece from Eduard representing an ice guard in to the heating port. A file could fit, but they are not fine enough and would therefore leave scratches. What’s really needed is a small sanding stick in the 400 – 600 grade range which is exactly what Precision Stix are. In fact grades ranging from 320 to 1500 are available. They are also useful on resin parts when sanding to a straight, flat edge.

All interior parts were painted by first airbrushing a base coat of Model Master enamel, followed by shading and highlighting with Humbrol using techniques I developed to paint figures.

The airframe was airbrushed with Gunze acrylics using a Badger 150. For weathering, I then used a combination of Winsor Newton oil paints, pastels, water-soluble poster paints and over spraying with very thinned Humbrol enamels.

The decals are a combination of kit, Aeromaster, Third Group, Microscale and Xtradecal. I used Microset and Solvaset to ensure they all settled down properly.

The Luftwaffe figure is by Verlinden with slightly modified arms. The RAF figure is by Reheat Models with the supplied head replaced by one from Teknics. Their faces were painted with Winsor & Newton while their uniforms are Humbrol.

The refueling cart is stock Verlinden, airbrushed and dry-brushed with Humbrol. For the base, I used CGC drywall compound to create the basic groundwork. I then added static grass and O gauge railroad ties. For finishing, I first stained the groundwork with Woodland Scenics earth colour liquid pigment and then followed up with airbrushed and drybrushed Humbrol. The railroad ties were stained with Humbrol over which heavily diluted Winsor Newton burnt sienna and burnt umber was splattered to represent fluid leaks from the He 219’s twin engines.

The finished scene represents a He 219 of NJG 3 based in Denmark at the end of the war in May 1945.

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German Night Fighter Aces of World War 2 Aircraft of the Aces 20 Author: Jerry Scutts Illustrator: John Weal US Price: $19.95 UK Price: £12.99 Publisher: Osprey Publishing Publish Date:  June 5, 1998 Details: 96 pages; ISBN: 1855327147 Shop Buy it from Osprey Publishing