Messerschmitt Bf 109B-1 (early)

Construction Notes

The kit is reasonably accurate when it comes to measurements and shape. The top of the nose had to be "built up" a bit to make the model look more like a Bf 109B. I used a small piece of 5 thou sheet, putty, sanded everything to shape, finished with some Mr. Surfacer 500, and finally sanded with (all the way up to 12000 grit) wet sanding paper. Note that the gun ports had to be redone as well. The kit comes with C- and early D-model exhausts. These had to be completely cut off for a B-model (it only had holes in the cowling). I made a decal to represent the 6 holes.

For the cockpit interior, I used the True Details resin parts for the Bf 109E. They seemed to work reasonably well. Kit fuselage walls had to be sanded a bit thinner, and the resin sidewalls had to be cut a bit to fit with the resin "bottom". A new radiator had to be built under the wing (I cut the old one off). Wheel wells needed to be furnished; I built the sides from 5 thou strips. Main landing gear brake lines I made from thin steel wire.

My understanding is that most Legion Condor aircraft were painted RLM 77 (Lichtgrau) on the top side, with undersides RLM 65 (Hellblau). Some "color" photographs exist of this particular aircraft, but they look like they were colorized, hence some guesswork is called for. I used ModelMaster paints: RLM 63 Lichtgrau on the top side (very close to RLM 77) and RLM 65 on the underside. The panels around the exhausts look dark but not black, as a guess I used RLM 66 Schwartzgrau. Exhaust openings themselves I did using my own decals of "black dots". As a good guess, wheel wells and landing gear struts I painted in the gray primer RLM 02. In photographs, the propeller (fixed-pitch two-bladed metal prop) looks darker than the plane itself, but does not look "metallic", hence it got a coat of RLM 02 as well. Wheels I painted in RLM 66, tires are black.

I made my own decals for the Legion Condor aircraft "6-15". Heller decals were completely useless (very thick and didn't stick particularly well). Oil and gasoline hatch triangle markings came from an InScale sheet for Bf 109G. For weathering, I tried to give the plane a slightly "grimy" look (as per photographs of the original plane). This involved shaving off a pencil, mixing ever so slight amounts of the dust with Future floorwax, and brushing it onto select places on the plane. For exhaust stains, I started by dry-brushing ModelMaster "rust" color onto the fuselage, I then used the same pencil dust and spread it directly with a Q-Tip.

Initial fuselage build-up

Note the nose contour modification

Wheel well sides

Note the new oil cooler

Initial paint job

Landing gear attached, awaiting decals