Messerschmitt Bf110E Eduard 1/48

I’m going to make a German fighter for the first time in a while. And it’s a twin-engine plane. I chose Messerschmitt Bf110E. In the past, I thought twin-engine aircraft were troublesome because they had many parts and were large. Still, after making several twin-engine aircraft, I found the Luftwaffe twin-engine aircraft very interesting. I can’t make that much because it seems to take time.

There are a lot of parts overall. When I look at the assembly illustration later, it seems that there are many unnecessary parts, but I think there are still many.

Decals are included in the kit. Is there only one painting pattern this time? The ICM kit didn’t include the decal itself, so I had to prepare it separately. But I am thankful that there is a Swastika inside.

Just around the cockpit, there are many small parts, and it is hard to assemble.

There seemed to be three seats, so I wondered if there were so many crew, but there seemed to be only two. They might change magazines, control radios, sit in temporary seats and work.

I think it’s part of the six machine guns in the fuselage, and the parts were reproduced. There is also a swivel machine gun in the rear, and the pilot had to control the aircraft, so will two crew be enough? It’s not a one-operation, but I think it’s hard in the sky.
(2022/07/12)

There are still a lot of other areas that need to be painted in the same color, but for now, I’ve painted all of them together to build them into the fuselage. This aircraft has a large canopy, so I think it will be rewarded if you make it in detail. This is all I could do. I wanted a decal for the cockpit panel.

2×20 mm machine guns and 4×7.92 mm machine guns are mounted on the nose, and a 7.92 mm machine gun is mounted as a rear rotating machine gun and a drum magazine. A lot of spare ammunition is placed around the crew. The seatbelt is available separately and is carefully painted. The pilot seat is fully attached, and the assistant has only the belt around the waist. It has no backrest. Unfortunately, 7.92, most of this was hidden when the plane was assembled.

I painted the meter part in gross black. I tried to draw the scale in white with a fine brush, but it didn’t work well. I could have drawn in a little more detail if it had had a mold with the instrument’s scale, but it was a flat part without scale, so this might be the limit.

German planes are long and narrow. On the other hand, this Bf110 has a relatively large wing area. The left and right parts of the fuselage are attached.
(2022/07/15)

Because the engines are on both wings, the space at the nose is packed with machine guns. There are six guns, just by counting.

After all, when the nose cowl is inserted, only a few nozzles of the machine gun are visible. I took the trouble to build it, so I took a picture of the internal structure. I can understand the internal structure better, but if you assemble it usually, you can just cut off the barrel and insert it from the outside. Because the parts are detailed and it took many times.

The right-wing and the left-wing were assembled with slightly different parts, so when I tried to make them all, they seemed to mix and disappear, so I built them individually. The engine cowl had to be glued to the wing, so it wasn’t easy. There are also many parts.

There is a lot of roughness just by assembling the whole body. There are gaps and steps in various places, so I wonder if they can be corrected. I’m pretty worried. After this, I will glue various protrusions, so I think it is time to shape the aircraft properly.
(2022/07/21)

Many of the landing gear parts of this kit are different between the right and the left, so it is easy to get mixed up. Along with the engine cowl, a landing gear hangar is also located at the rear of the engine. It seems that quite a big tire is stored. It wasn’t easy to fix this landing gear pole, and there were few glue points. I thought it would be better to use instant glue to firmly fix the inside, which can’t be seen so much.

Propeller assembly and engine exhaust. There is no hole in the exhaust port, so if I make the opening with a luter later, it may be a little more precise. It is troublesome that there are too many muffler pipes.

This time, the bomber fighter will carry SC250, a 250-kilogram bomb typical to the Luftwaffe, two on the bottom of the fuselage, and SD50, a 50-kilogram bomb under the left and right wings, a total of four. The total load is 700 kilograms.

Unfortunately, the propeller must be fixed. The angle of this blade looks best. After all, as I fiddle with it little by little, it gradually takes shape. There were a lot of parting lines, gaps, and steps, but I filled in the gaps with Tamiya’s light effect putty and scraps of stretch runners. There are some areas I could not recover, but I want to see the completion as soon as possible so that I can proceed.
(2022/07/28)

Hmm, I can’t find the canopy parts. I can’t move on. I think it’s a clear part of a small runner; there are probably two. It seems to have disappeared between dimensions. I remember seeing it when I opened the box, but I’m not sure. I don’t think it was a cat’s work, so I’m wondering if I accidentally threw it away in a plastic bag, or if it’s still somewhere in my house, or maybe what I saw was a misunderstanding, and since I’ve been making plastic models of aircraft continuously lately. I am very concerned. I will look for it a little more, and if I can’t find it, I will think of some way. I’m afraid the work will be suspended until then. I’m sorry I’ve come so far. I just thought I saw canopy parts in other kits. I have to get a canopy first. There could be some third parties.
(2022/07/30)

I got a vacuum foam canopy for the Bf 110 E from Rob-Taurus. Thin and transparent high-quality PVC plate. It’s made in the Czech Republic.

Hmm, is this to be cut out? I hardly ever do this kind of work, so I hesitate. Honestly, I prefer plastic parts.

I managed to finish the process after using various tools. At first, I was fearfully trying to start, but it cannot be helped that I need to begin an aggressive trial at some point. The rear machine gun part has a semicircle cut out, so we can manage if we have a luter and a thin round file.

I think it fits well. It’s good, considering it was left without a canopy.
(2022/08/20)

As with torpedo bombers and ordinary bombers, it isn’t easy to mask large canopies because they have many window frames. I stuck it as neatly as possible, but it might break a little.

This time, since it is a PVC vacuum foam part, I did not know if it would stick with plastic adhesive, so I used a light curable clear adhesive. It seems to be fairly fixed.

I’m blowing white before yellow to get better color. Then I realized that there was a clear part on the front of the wing and that the light or something had not been glued yet. Of course, there are no canopy parts, so there are no other clear parts. Recovering these parts when the work is interrupted is out of rhythm. Can a clear epoxy resin or something replace it?

This German plane is plain, but it uses many colors, so I am thinking about the order of the painting. The engine cowl and cockpit interior are painted first, then a portion of the spinner is painted white, and the lower part of the engine cowl and the fuselage are also painted white and then yellow. I thought the smoothest way would be to paint the lower part of the fuselage after lightly priming with black and then apply camouflage paint on the top and sides of the fuselage while masking. I think it will take much time and effort to do masking work in the middle.
(2022/08/24)

Instead of a clear part, I filled the place with a clear resin that hardened when exposed to ultraviolet light. The transparency is high, so that it may be surprisingly good.

I undercoated it lightly in black. Then, two colors of the Creos German plane camouflage bottles are empty. I can’t move forward unless I buy it on the weekend. When I started assembling it, I thought it would be a long time before I could paint, so I forgot to check the stock of paint later. Even so, the two colors are empty, so I was careless because the lacquer paint of Creos is used by diluting it, so it is relatively slow to decrease.
(2022/08/26)

I made a hole in the exhaust pipe with a sharp object that I had forgotten. It was shaved by attaching a fine tip to a motor tool. This kind of work should be done before installing the parts. It’s hard to handle.

I finally got the German camouflage paint on the weekend, but the Abrams work wasn’t complete enough to change. When I started to paint, it started to go smoothly.

It is masking after painting, so the process is a little slow.

How should I paint the top of the plane? While the wings and horizontal stabilizers look like they will be painted differently on the top and undersides, the painting boundary on the fuselage is fuzzy. In that case, I might not be able to blow the camouflage color on the top by increasing the pressure of the airbrush. This is enough for the masking process.

Despite repeated large-scale work, the German plane is still plain as usual. Even if the enemy aircraft looks at it from above, the color of the top of the German aircraft is almost the same as the color of the ground, so it will be hard to see. Maybe it’ll look cooler when I finish putting the decal on.
(2022/08/30)

The decal was tough this time. Usually, Mr. Mark Softer is enough, but I used a stronger mark softer this time.

I didn’t know much about the wingtip lamp, but there was no mold in the kit, so I made a clear part with epoxy resin and painted it clear red and green.

The organization of the Luftwaffe is complicated, and I don’t know it well. According to the instructions, the markings were made by a fighter bomber unit on the Eastern Front of Poland in December 1942. I wonder if the 1st Fighter Bomb Wing or something. The features are the yellow band of the body and the lower side of the engine cowl, and the wolf head on both sides of the nose. It’s like the shark nose you see in US fighter jets during the Vietnam War.

The best feature of the Bf110 fighter is that it is heavily armed with 2×20 mm machine guns at the nose, 4×7.92 mm machine guns, and 1×7.92 mm machine guns at the rear. There is also a pile of spare ammunition in the cockpit.

I thought painting the aircraft would not be fun because it is quite plain. When I finished painting, I could see the color separation of the camouflage pattern, and it’s a twin-engine plane with a wide wing surface, big, powerful, and cool.

The maximum explosive loading was 1,200kg with two 500kg bombs and four 50kg bombs. This time it will be a full load.

This building was complex. I thought about giving it up because it didn’t have any parts, but anyway, I’m glad it has a shape. Maybe it’s because of my personality, but I can’t continue to be motivated when I keep working on one item.
(2022/09/02)