Luftwaffe Striker Henschel Hs123 A-1 Tamiya 1/48

I will try to build Tamiya’s Luftwaffe ground attack aircraft, Hs123. I thought it was Tamiya’s original, but it was originally an Italeri kit. It seems to take a lot of work with a biplane, but the number of parts is not so much. I bought it a long time ago, and it came out with a Hasegawa F-16 from the back of the closet. It’s like an ancient ruins, and I want to complete it and fulfill its role.

Only the jerrycans and drums runner that is included as a bonus seems to be from Tamiya.

Starting with the assembly of the cockpit and the airframe is the same as the ordinary airplane plastic model even for biplanes. It doesn’t fit well, so I fix it with a small vise until the adhesion dries.

Maybe it’s because this kit is quite old, but the parts are inaccurate. Almost all parts need to be adjusted to fit. There are also many gaps. It’s stressful. The number of parts is small, so the progress may not be slow.
(2024/02/19)

The area of the engine visible from the front is quite large. The engine itself is lightly painted, including the inside of the cowl.

Tamiya decals are less damaged even if stored for a relatively long time. I could probably use this decal… I mean it’s Italeri. Looking at the decal carefully, in addition to the Italeri original, it also comes with a Tamiya one. The one of the 5th Company of the 1st Ground Strike Wing, which has a mascot character, is in both Italeri and Tamiya. Is Tamiya more precise? Since it comes with an additional decal, I think I’ll make it with this marking. It also includes the decal of the cockpit panel.

I guess it is inevitable that the engine cowl is divided because the engine has to be wrapped, but I wonder if these adhesive marks will be clear.

I’m struggling to assemble the upper and lower wings with a biplane. So, if I’m so preoccupied with the assembly of details that I forget whether the main wing and the airframe are in the proper position, there will be a huge discrepancy. Maybe it warped during adhesion. I checked it just in case, but somehow it is acceptable. I bought a large amount of superglue a long time ago, and even if I store it properly, the fluidity gradually decreases. I think it’s better to buy a little bit of superglue as much as we use it. Although superglue is abnormally consumed only when making ship models, the amount of superglue used is limited because the scale is 1/700 and the parts are large but the size is small. I don’t make ship models that often.
(2024/02/21)

It’s hard to put together… The biplane posts on the nose don’t fit well, so I use putty to correct them. I hope it will be a little more beautiful.

I think I can assemble the whole unit without failure somehow.

The bomb pylon, fuel tank, and other small parts were installed and assembled to this point before painting.

Actually, there was a gap in the rear wheel posts. This will also stand out later without some putty.

I painted white and then yellow to improve the color. The paint is quite thick, so I think I should let it dry for a day even though it is lacquer paint. I will put masking tape on it.

Come to think of it, an edible cricket company went bankrupt a while ago in Japan. I guess I’m a little relieved. It may be necessary in the end, but it’s the last time that we can’t catch up with normal agricultural production, fishing, and hunting. We can grow crops on fallow and abandoned fields and cultivate golf courses, parks, and riverbeds if there is still a shortage. There’s a lot of cultivable land if we ignore the law. I have less resistance to eating deer, black bass, and crayfish than insects. I can’t even have a locust or a bee larvae.
(2024/02/24)

I have painted it with an undercoat. The painting area is large because there are two wings. It is hard to paint as there are many posts.

Masking is in progress after painting the underside of the aircraft.

There is no word in the description of the paint on the kit of Italeri, but perhaps it would be more historically true to have a Swastica mark on the tail. It’s a unit that was used in the 1942 German-Soviet war, and it usually has other aircraft on it. I bought an Xtra decal at Hannants a long time ago, so I will put it on. I would have preferred a size a little larger, but for now, this is fine.

I glued 4×50 kg bombs and it was almost finished. I think it will be complete after painting the details and lightly weathering the painting. But I forgot to put a small decal on the side of the biplane support. I can’t concentrate these days.

I am worried that the Ukrainian army will be like South Vietnam in the past if the U.S. support is gone. Japan seems to be preparing on the assumption of U.S. assistance in case of a crisis, but looking at the situation in Ukraine, it is questionable whether the U.S. will join the war if Japan is attacked. I am sorry for Ukraine, but it is a lesson for Japan that the Japanese took a little interest in national defense awareness. I wish Japan could join NATO, but it has nothing to do with the North Atlantic geographically. Can we change the name of the alliance?
(2024/02/26)

Hs-123 is complete. It was the first dive bomber in the Luftwaffe. It was deployed in 1936 and was active in the Spanish Civil War. However, from around the summer of 1938, the newly developed Junkers 87, the so-called Stuka, was deployed and moved from a dive-bombing squad to a ground attack squad. Is it related to equipment if it is transferred?

It was a premise that if there was air superiority, but the biplane could make small turns and operate even in bad weather, which was helpful enough. The number of aircraft produced was a small number, about 260, but the result of the operation was quite effective.

Marking is the 5th Company of the 1st Ground Attack Wing, the aircraft in Russia in 1942.

Cute airframe with distinctive uneven cowling.

There were also marking examples of paintings that looked like winter camouflage white painted on top of normal paint. This is only dirty if it is not well expressed in a model. Or it might be better to add a figure with a brush as a model of the scene. Well, this time I will proceed normally.

If I look into it, I can see the meter panel of the cockpit. A decal was included so it looks exactly like a meter.

I glued seatbelts sold separately. I couldn’t paint it very well, but it might have improved the precision.

This time, four 50kg bombs are carried in the armaments. The small 50 kg bomb is said to be aimed mainly at targets easily damaged, such as scattered ground troops, and airplanes at airfields. It is more effective to spread small bombs over a wide area. In the modern era, the concept of cluster bombs is probably the same as that. Larger bombs seem to be more suitable for the destruction of robust buildings.

I think yellow is often used for the planes of Axis countries such as German and Romanian troops. Suppose yellow is used to identify friends and foes of Axis forces, anti-aircraft artillery units on the ground and other infantry also shoot rifles into the air. In that case, I wonder if the Army was thoroughly aware of the mark for identifying friends.

Although it was difficult to make many parts, it somehow became a shape. I thought it was all dark green and a little simple. Yellow is used here and there and the markings are cool. This time, I didn’t use drums for a while, so I didn’t make them. Maybe I’ll use it to make a diorama someday. Well, I might not make a diorama.

On the news, President Zelensky announced for the first time that 31000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed. But as you might expect, these numbers are pretty unreliable. The digits are wrong. Are they trying to underreport Ukraine’s losses and get aid money? Western media that report such things do not have a level of freedom of the press that cannot be blamed on China or Russia. There are reports that the number of soldiers is so short that elderly pensioners and female soldiers are participating in the battle. It seems that strict enforcement against draft dodging has become a regular occurrence. If it is true that there are not enough young people and even women and old people are drafted, the damage is less than hundreds of thousands. But since both Ukraine and Russia are at war, it may be inevitable for both sides to announce their damage as low as possible. The truth will not be published for some years.
(2024/02/28)