Classic Airframes 1/48 Heinkel He 112 by Roland Sachsenhofer

Classic Airframes 1/48 scale
Heinkel He 112

by Roland Sachsenhofer

Heinkel He 112

Hobby Boss' 1/32 Spitfire Mk.Vb Trop is available online from Squadron

Description

The Heinkel He-112 design had emerged in the mid-30s from the RLM competition for a new, contemporary fighter for the Luftwaffe. In the first variant, as He-112 A, the design still had an open pilot's cabin as well as a fixed undercarriage, and was thus, among other points, inferior to Messerschmitt's Bf 109. In the completely revised He-112 B version, however, the design showed all the advantages of a contemporary modern fighter.

The stable landing gear was now retractable, the aerodynamically improved wing as well as the fuselage with an attached cockpit hood offered best flight performance while the armament with two 20 mm MG FF and two 7.92 mm MG 17 promised striking power. But the decision for the 109 remained valid, Heinkel was approved however a small series for the export.

Imperial Japan showed great interest in this high performance hunter, according to some sources more than 30 exemplars were exported to Far East Asia. But also European customers like the nationalistic Spain under Franco, as well as Hungary and later also Romania, which used the model after the invasion of the Soviet Union with considerable success, were impressed by Heinkel's fighter aircraft.

My model shows one of the three He-112s delivered to Hungary in their appearance in April 1941. The Hungarian He-112s were never used in combat, as far as I know, but they were given the identifications prescribed for the aircraft of the Axis powers in the form of yellow fuselage bands at the bow, stern and centre of the fuselage after the outbreak of fighting in Yugoslavia.

The aging kit offers a rather spartan equipped basis to build a He-112B. I can't complain about the fitting accuracy, but it got hairy with the completely missing design of the landing gear bays. The detailing didn't go wrong - there is simply nothing there! With plastic strips, etched parts and some masking tape I built up and refined what was possible for me.

The armament is not included in the kit. In this respect I improvised the four MG muzzles out of hollow brass tube. For the pipes used in the front bow area I first had to drill out the two halves of the hull at the appropriate places. The position lights, also not considered in the kit forms, were made with fast hardened CA-glue, which was applied to coloured cut-outs.

The most dramatic shortcoming of the kit, however, is the coarse representation of the oil cooler. This was extendable and retractable on the real He-112. Classic Airframes shows this in such a way that the fixed radiator part was designed as a solid cast block, the lower movable part should simply be glued to it - without any indication of radiator grille or similar. The result had nothing to do with the appearance of the original, so I made some surgical changes. Together with the use of etched parts from the spare box , a reasonable approximation to the original was finally achieved.

All in all, the project gave me great pleasure, not least because I was able to master some new challenges - because there is always something to learn!

If you are interested in the building process, please have a look here on Scalemates:

https://www.scalemates.com/profiles/mate.php?id=10148&p=albums&album=46579

Thumbnail panels:

As ever, remarks will be appreciated: ro.sachsenhofer@gmx.at

Back to HyperScale Main Page