I started building the Heinkel He111H-6, a twin-engine bomber from ICM. There are a lot of canopies as there are anti-aircraft gun seats on the rear and the bottom of the aircraft. At first glance, it looks like a large wing area for both wings and tail.
The finished size is quite large and the engine is reproduced by a twin-engine airplane, so the number of parts is quite large for an airplane plastic model. A quick glance shows that torpedoes are included in the armaments, so I’d like to use them. It is a type of kit where we decide which pattern to make from the painting diagram first and select the parts.
First, it leads to the assembly of the landing gear compartment, the accompanying frame, and the cockpit by extension. It’s a very different story from the idea of building a single-engine fighter casually. I have built a few twin-engine fighters, but the order of assembly is very different depending on the manufacturer, and this ICM is unique.
It says there are five crew members, but where do they all sit? There is a cockpit, but the rest are gun seats and bomb sighting men. But there are no parts that look like chairs except for the gun seat and the pilot’s seat. I don’t see the inside that much, so I guess it’s okay to omit it. I have the impression that the internal reproduction is half-finished, but if I care about such things, it may not be finished.
Was the He111 line diverted from the first passenger plane? Or was it developed as a military aircraft under the pretext of passenger aircraft? I forgot, but the latter is similar to the development of tanks under the name of agricultural tractors. There are some windows on both sides, so I need to mask them before I paint them inside. There’s a hole in the machine gun, so I’ll have to paint it fine later.
(2025/03/03)
When painting the inside of the aircraft, there is an anti-aircraft gun magazine rack inside the window, making it difficult to paint and mask. It seems better to attach it after painting it with an airbrush and brush it after assembling the small parts.
Before gluing the parts of the gun seat on the top of the fuselage, I put a lot of guns inside, so I paint them in parallel. That said, except for the guns that come out of the windows on both sides, it seems they can be glued together afterwards.
The main wing is very wide. The shape of the main wing is not as much as Gigant, but I can feel the image of Gigant.
In the painting example I am trying to make, it seems to be necessary to cut off the rear part of the aircraft and glue different parts. It is the type with a machine gun attached to the very back of the aircraft. Quite a lot of machine guns are attached. It’s like a hedgehog.
I noticed that one side of the landing gear hangar at the rear of the engine was accidentally turned the other way, and the bottom part of the main wing did not fit well. Since it hasn’t been long since it was glued, I put in pouring adhesive, removed the parts and reassembled, but I made a pretty big mistake. That was dangerous.
(2025/03/06)
I assembled the engines. I was impressed with the fine molding. But once I put the engine cowls on, I can hardly see everything, so it’s good that I can feel the atmosphere of the engine. However, if this part is not assembled, the propeller cannot be fastened, so it is better to assemble it properly.
The underside of the main wing was attached to the fuselage. Normally, I would make all the wings and then glue them to the fuselage, but I guess this is better for the twin engine. After bonding normally, I reinforced various places with superglue.
This time, I am going to install 2 torpedoes, so I completed the assembly at this point. It has 2 stacked screws and a ladder behind it. It was interesting to assemble a torpedo for the first time in a while.
It was a very difficult assembly process to attach the top and bottom of the engine cowl and main wings. I can’t finish it neatly as there are steps and gaps. All I can do is shape it.
The tip of the plane is full of clear canopies. I glued the instrument panel inside it and stuck the decal. It’s a pretty precise decal. I will also install an anti-aircraft gun.
(2025/03/09)
The seat didn’t have a seat belt, so I imagined it, and added something like this. With so many clear canopies, an extra seat belt would be quite effective.
During the making process, the parts are gradually assembled into the shape of an airplane, but since there are many parts that consist only of the outside, I am very concerned about the fit of the parts. I’m worried about whether it will be able to form all the way to the end without breaking down, but even though it did require a bit of putty, I don’t think it was in such a bad condition that the assembly was thrown away.
Of all the plastic airplane models I’ve made in the past, I think I have the most window masking. I don’t want to look at the airplane window for a while. There’s too much of this canopy and too many canopy frames.
The plastic material of this kit is quite soft. If you apply too much glue, it will soften quickly.
I tried to recover the parts where there are steps and gaps in the airframe by stretching them and filling them with thin strips of runners, filling them with superglue and scraping them, and using light curing putty, but it is quite difficult. I used superglue and stretch runners more often than light curing putty because they can maintain the strength of the airframe.
In the assembly process, I finally assembled everything except the torpedoes and propellers. This is a kit with a lot of steps, so I wanted to make it simple. I think I’ll be able to do with masking. After all, a big kit requires mental power.
(2025/03/11)
I started painting. I thought the painted surface would be large and not very different, so I painted black on the panel line to make it light and dark. However, it may not have had much effect as a result.
The yellow part is painted and the underside of the aircraft is painted, and the masking work is in progress. It’s hard to decide how much to mask perfectly, but I think it’s better to cover the whole surface as much as possible even if it’s a hassle. I had bought a bunch of masking tapes in various sizes, so it’s a good time to make use of them.
The camouflage paint with the combination of straight lines is typical of German aircraft. I used the painting manual as a reference and masked it so that the atmosphere does not differ too much.
While I was doing various things during painting, one of the anti-aircraft guns moved inside and came off. This is absolutely impossible to undo. Every time I tilt it, it rattles inside and bothers me a lot. Shall I put glue in the syringe and fix it on the floor? Even if I could see it, I thought about keeping a spare barrel at the foot, but there aren’t so many windows around here, so it’s hard to see inside.
After attaching the decal, it looks pretty good even though it is a large aircraft. The Swastika of the tail is not included in the ICM kit, so I use the largest size of XTRADECAL which is sold separately. I’ve heard that by law, Swastika related to Nazi Germany cannot be handled. I am a model fan who would like this part to be excused for the fact given the historical reproducibility. Swastika is an inverted mark, but Shorinji martial arts uses a similar one. I mean, this is older. It’s a shame because this symbol is originally meant to represent the origin of life and the flowing universe, so it shouldn’t have any evil or nefarious impression. Shorinji martial arts seems to use a different mark now, and it also looks pretty cool.
(2025/03/14)
I finally finished a large bomber kit. There are many types of the HE111H series up to the H-23, and the total production of the entire series is more than 7,000. The H-6 is an aircraft with the ability to carry 2 torpedoes, and it was written that the gun seat on the belly is removed, but it looks like there is a gun seat on the belly as well. The production number was 1,800, the largest among the He 111.
The bomb can carry up to 2 tons of external suspension and 1 ton of internal suspension, or 2 torpedoes, so this time I put 2 torpedoes which looks impressive.
He111 H-6 was mainly used to attack Soviet and British ships in the Baltic and North Seas. It also conducts joint operations with the Italian Air Force to target supply routes for British forces on the Mediterranean front. I wonder if it was working with Savoia Marchetti’s torpedo bomber, which it had built before. However, in the latter half of the war, the Allied air superiority increased, and torpedo attacks by slow bombers became dangerous. It takes courage to rush into the side of a warship at an altitude of 30 to 100 meters.
I chose the rather flashy Luftwaffe Kampfgeschwader 53, KG53, which was deployed in Poland in 1941. It was one of the bomber wings operated by the Luftwaffe during World War II, mainly equipped with the Heinkel He-111. The name “Legion Condor” comes from the Legion Condor Corps, a German volunteer force active in the Spanish Civil War. In 1941, it seems that he participated in the Barbarossa operation and played an active role in attacking Moscow and destroying the supply lines of the Soviet army.
I was really concerned about the anti-aircraft gun that had fallen inside, so I attached superglue to the end of the thin metal wire, glued it to the end of the machine gun inside the aircraft, and when it dried, I guided it slowly to the window of the machine gun opening window, and I was able to take out the barrel. It’s like making a bottle ship. I almost went crazy because I couldn’t work as I wanted.
It’s not because I was doing such work, but the window got dirty. However, when I was working to rescue this machine gun, the other windows were stained from the inside in some places, maybe from mist or glue, so I didn’t care too much about it, and I plunged the wire boldly. As with the previous F-15C, I feel that it is better to open the canopy partially so that I can recover from sudden bad results later. Maybe next time I’ll make it with the canopy open.
The yellow part of the aircraft will look better with white painted first.
The lower surface of the aircraft is light blue, so the inking to the panel line is dark gray.
The torpedo didn’t have a detailed description, but I painted the front with dark iron, the back with silver, and the screw with gold. There are many variations of paint, so you can paint it as you like.
The only way I can think of to recover a dirty window is to paint it with smoke.
Since the airplane is a dark color, I tried to inking to the panel lines in light gray, but to be honest, it is not so good. It was too bright to stand out. Since the main wing area is large, I thought it might give a flat impression, so I chose a light color, but it became too lively. Dark gray would have been better. And there were surprisingly a lot of panel lines on the tail. This kind of model performance depends on personal preference, but this is OK. Well, it’s a difficult kit to assemble.
(2025/03/16)
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