By popular request – well the Oberst and Nightbomber requested it – and it being a slow day in the office, I give you my ‘How To’ for painting the Heinkel 177, accessorised with a couple of Henschel glide bombs.
Why the Heinkel 177 for the Bomber Compo?
Working on the theory that a lot of entrants would go for Ares official models (B17, B25, Heinkel III, Lanc) I looked at my resin stash to find something different. I came up with a Junkers 287 and a couple of Greifs that fitted the bill. I ruled the Junkers out on the grounds that it was not operational and I couldn’t be arsed to develop a scenario so it could be entered in the competition.
What scheme?
Again I was looking for a camo scheme that stood out. I found many illustrations for the Greif, ranging from standard light blue underside/2-tone green splinter pattern upper surface scheme to the nightmare scheme that became my entry. Given the small scale and the fact that I was brush painting rather than airbrushing, I ruled out any scheme that had a spray mottle finish as I couldn’t get the mottle to look ‘right’. I settled for the KG100 scheme shown in Airfile’s book “Adler Gegen England”. This gives a port-side view, and a quick Google turned up a plan view of the scheme. As an aside, Google also turned up a picture of a FW190/He177 Mistel combination, which got me salivating somewhat!
Prepping the model
The plane itself came from Armaments in Miniature, as did the two Henschel glide bombs.
This got a quick going-over with sanding sticks, holes were drilled where guns and aerial should be, and piano wire superglued into the holes. A domed hole was bored underneath to eventually take the ballbearing that would form the gimble. A smaller hole was then drilled through the middle of this big hole to take a length of brass rod, which did service as a handle during painting. A quick degrease in soapy water followed by an overall spray of Tamiya Superfine Grey Primer, and we were ready to rock & roll.
Painting
I had so many good ideas for this: producing paint masks, airbrushing the camo scheme...... 5 minutes looking at the model and working what needed to be done on such a small scale plane convinced me that life was way too short, so away went the airbrush and out came the paint brushes.
All glass was painted in Vallejo French Mirage blue, Games Workshop blue ink then highlighted in lighter shades of Mirage blue. That was the easy bit. The rest of the painting was done with Life Color paints, which are designed for airbrushes and are very thin. Therefore you need at least two coats of everything to get the necessary depth of colour when hand brushing, but you don’t get an obvious build up of paint you sometimes get when overpainting surfaces with several layers.
The AIM model has finely etched panel lines which I first painted with a thin coat of a darker shade of the overall surface colour (RLM 65 Hellblau undersides, RLM 76 Lichtblau upper surfaces) The lower panels were carefully painted in (much restoring of panel lines and harsh language ensued), masked off and the process repeated on the topside with the Lichtblau (The original apparently had green uppers oversprayed with Lichtblau, but I did it the other way round as I felt painting a light colour over a darker one would cause problems). I overpainted the green pattern freehand then painted in the panel lines in the green area. If I had dispensed with the panel lines I think painting time would have been cut by 75%. That left the guns and the swirly bits on the prop bosses and removal of masking tape, and it was ready for a coat of Life Color gloss varnish.
Decals and finishing
All decals came from Mehusla, either 1/200 or 1/144 scale. The large codes on the original were not edged with white/black, but I used a bit of artistic licence to make them stand out a bit more. A couple of coats of Testor’s Dullcote, removal of the brass rod and installation of the ballbearing, addition of AA Perspex props and it was ready for photographing.
Painting the Hs293s
Paint blue – sorted!
Mistakes
Mistakes Andrzej? How very dare you!
Actually there’s only two I can think of (apart from picking this flaming scheme in the first place), the first was carelessly overpainting bits of the panel lines on occasion (OK, many occasions) and having to restore them. This took up a lot of time. The second was a couple of times when I got confused painting the upper surface and sent squiggles in the wrong direction and had to overpaint them (SWMBO calling for me to tone down the language...).
Hints
Not much to offer here, other than what’s gone before – use of a brass rod saved having to handle the plane with greasy mitts while painting. Good quality masking tape is a must to stop paint bleed. See Jame’s (FarEast) article on masking tape here
Oh and remember children, when using a can of spray primer make sure the nozzle is pointing towards the model, not away from it (that’s another T-shirt I won’t be wearing again!).
In conclusion
It wasn’t the easiest paintjob to apply and there was a point where I more or less lost the will to live, but I have to say I was pleased with the end result. If I was just painting this up for gaming I wouldn’t have bothered with panel lines, saving myself a lot of grief (greif, grief – geddit?). I still have another He177 to paint, which will probably end up as a 2/KG100 machine which had black under surfaces and green splinter pattern on top, and will be armed with 2 BBBs (Bloody Big Bombs). On the other hand the pic of the Mistel combo is tempting.....
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