MPM 1/72 Heinkel He-100

MPM 1:72 HEINKEL HE-100

Reviewer: Myself (smakr@bigpond.com)
Kit Review submitted: 16 October 2001

Aircraft:
The Heinkel He-100 is a sleek fighter design that was developed to compete as a higher performance aircraft against the Messerschmitt Bf-109. Ernst Heinkel's intention was also to develop such an excellent fighter that its capabilities and performance would overwhelm anything else it's competitors had to offer, and the German hierarchy would have no choice but to award him the contract. Unfortunately it was not seen by the powers that be, that this aircraft was superior and thus it never made it into actual production.

The Messerschmitt Bf 109 had been adopted as the Luftwaffe's standard monoplane fighter in preference to Heinkel's He 112 submission, but this still did not stop the team designing a new high speed fighter capable of 700 km/h. It was also engineered for ease of production with few curves and the minimum number of parts and components, resulting in the Heinkel He 100a prototype, which made its first flight in early 1938. Piloted by Ernst Udet with an upgraded Daimler-Benz engine, the second prototype captured the 100 km closed-circuit landplane record in mid 1938. This aircraft was officially referred to as the Heinkel He 112U, to boost the reputation of the He 112B sold to Japan and Spain. The third prototype was built to break the absolute world speed record, with a reduced wing span, but it was the similarly built 8th prototype that actually achieved this in March 1939, when it raised the record to more than 746km/h. Prototypes four and five were designated the He 100B; prototypes six, seven and nine were completed to He 100C standard, the latter being the first aircraft to be armed, carrying two 20-mm cannons and four 7.92-mm machine guns.

Handling deficiencies encountered during testing of the prototypes eventuated in the development of the Heinkel He 100D with enlarged tail surfaces and with a conventional, semi-retractable ventral radiator in place of the earlier enclosed system. Production of He 100D totalled 15, most of which were built to He 100D-1 production aircraft (three were He 100D-0 pre-production versions) that were retained at Heinkel's factory and flown by staff pilots as a local defence unit.

Since the Bf 109's were now using the same Daimler-Benz engine the He 100 was not adopted for Luftwaffe use and were assigned to duties at Heinkel's factory. Later in 1939, the three pre-production He 100D-0's were sold to Japan for proposed licence production, but this never materialised. Six of the prototypes were sold to the USSR where further history about their usage is unknown.

There were also a few [in]famous incidents where some of the production aircraft did take to the sky and meet up with RAF aircraft, usually in different camouflage schemes to confuse the Allies. British pilots reported the aircraft as being a new an improved Luftwaffe aircraft, dubbing it the He 113 before its true identity had been worked out.

The Kit:
There is already an INBOX review of this kit on this site so only the basic information is included here; you can follow the link at the bottom of the page if you wish to refer to the Inbox review.

MPM Limited Run kit No. C72016 - Heinkel He 100
There is a single sprue in a plastic bag of about 20 injection molded parts in light grey colour, small bits of flash evident with many parts requiring only a very minor and quick clean up. The parts do convey typical earlier MPM limited run technology. One vacform canopy is also included in the kit plus photo etched instrument panel and 18 piece brass etched detail set. Panel lines are very finely engraved and are of reasonable quality (but will soon disappear under a coat of paint!). There is no wheel well detail to speak of but the cockpit by virtue of the brass etched set (that includes seat belts, rudder pedals, instrument panels, sidewall detail etc) is quite good, although the injection parts such as the seat are very basic. Exhaust stacks are molded onto the fuselage and could do with some serious spicing up. The wings are broken down into a single underwing piece and two upper halves.

Instructions:
A single A4 sheet folded to make a small A5 booklet. A brief history is on the front in English, Czech and German. A sprue diagram is provided showing the part numbers (as the sprue itself does not have any numbers) and a four step construction assembly that is quite adequate for all but the novice modeller. Sketches of the cockpit side-on and the aircraft front and side profiles are also provided to assist with placement and angles and so forth. A four view diagram on the back page shows the colour scheme and markings for the versions produced including how an open cockpit should look.

Construction:
The first phase of assembly here is to clean up the flash and excess plastic from the parts, including removal of a few nasty ejector pin stubs, particularly on the insides of the wings. All the mating surfaces need to be prepared for optimum adhesive, so a lot of sanding and test fitting components was required. This is probably a typical earlier MPM offering showing all the traits of being a limited run injection molded kit and so patience, care and effort etc is needed on the part of the modeller. Additionally, the instructions are a bit vague in parts as far as positioning is concerned (and one or two parts are numbered incorrectly too!!!) so obviously a few MPM or limited run kits under the belt is recommended when considering building this kit.

Once the parts had been cleaned a bit, construction started in the cockpit. Most of the cockpit can be assembled straight from the styrene (ie: it is not fully necessary to have to use brass-etched set) as stick, seat, instrument panel, rear wall & "shelf" and rudder pedals are all included. First thing to do is glue the rear wall and shelf unit to the inside of the fuselage (as with all the parts, a run over with the excel blade to remove flash, plus sanding of the mating areas, were needed - so consider this statement true for just about every component of construction hereafter) - then the floor was glued against the fuselage interior underneath this. There is a very faint line near the belly that I assumed was where the floor is supposed to go - the instructions are not very helpful in the exact position of these parts, although a small inset diagram of the cockpit side-on is provided.

The cockpit was given an RLM02 wash, seats painted olive (not that you can tell any difference!), and I affixed the acetate film for the instrument panel and brass-etched console in with super glue. The fuselage halves were given a thorough sanding on the mating surfaces before being affixed together, and everything fits well, although the floor was smaller and a small gap could be seen, which was easily fixed with putty from the underside belly underwing cavity. I therefore gathered that I must have had the floor positioned too low in the fuselage.

I used a straight flat-file on the underbelly cavity to prepare it for the underwing piece and again sanded the mating surfaces and removed a bit of flash. According to the instructions a floor piece (part 15) is affixed underneath the cockpit area but I was not sure what this was really for or what it was intended to achieve and inadvertently I actually omitted it. When I discovered this later I also could not work out where omitting this piece had made a difference or was detrimental to the construction process so I will leave this decision up to you.

After dry fit testing the underwing piece to ensure it was going to fit into the belly cavity I then proceeded to glue it in place. Unfortunately though the rear of the wing/fuselage area has to bend over the wing roots. You have to hold the whole wing piece in place or use clamps to hold it together as it would otherwise prize apart or one end would pop out. To get around this I decided to use superglue and hold the wing section in place with my fingers (very careful not to have any seep through the fore and aft joins where I was holding it down) until it dried and this worked out very well and much easier than I had envisaged. While I added the upper wing halves afterward, some modellers may prefer to add them firstly to the underwing piece to ensure that everything is centred correctly when affixed to the fuselage.

Talking of the upper wing halves, these came next. More ejector pin stubs had to be removed from the wing insides, firstly snipped with blunt nose sprue cutters, then the remainder carefully sliced off with the excel blade before filing and sanding smooth. Again the surfaces, mating and wing edges needed a preparatory sanding to ensure everything adhered well and after test fitting, the wings do affix quite well and were left to dry with pegs as clamps. Wing root gaps still resulted and needed putty and sanding. The tailplanes were added next, mating surfaces sanded to assist the adhering process and these affix well and were left to dry before proceeding further - the instructions show front and side profiles to help with positioning of the wings and tailplanes which are essentially straight and level from the fuselage (although the main wings of course bend upward).

Unless you drill a hole in the nose, add a stopper and stretched sprue as the propeller shaft, the spinner and propeller has to be fixed to the nose of the aircraft. The propellers were painted black with no [yellow] warning tip because each photo of the He 100 I have suggests the propellers were one-colour. The sprue lugs were fairly thick and needed careful removal from the spinner in particular, a little bit of flash cleaned from the propeller housing grooves before the propeller was affixed to the spinner and the sub assembly fixed to the nose. However, make sure you add the propeller into the spinner the right way as the spinner should effectively be flush against the nose when it is affixed, the shaft still needed filing down to achieve a flush placement against the nose.

I did not test the undercarriage, these should go onto the model okay once they are fully cleaned and prepared. The whole undercarriage assembly can be achieved with the styrene parts in the kit although wheel hubs/covers can also be utilised from the brass etched set. In the absence of locating holes and pins one would suggest perhaps using super glue to optimise the bond. There is no wheel well detail in any of the bays and the instructions say to paint the interior RLM02. Fitting the gear doors in the closed position is quite problematic but still achievable. It is a matter of test fitting the parts continuously and persistently trimming them until they match the bay openings. A bit frustrating but all worked out in the end okay.

The canopy is one-piece vacform and obviously you need to cut it to size. I found the framework to cut around very faint, and therefore a little confusing at times so the big tip here is to underestimate the cut (so the frame is larger than required) first so that you can trim to size accordingly afterward (ie: you can always trim more off but you cannot replace where you have already cut!). In the end there were no problems with plenty of light on hand, and care taken. The vacform canopy fits well but I did notice that it was quite sleek in appearance and did not capture the bulbous middle canopy section highlighted in the photos (not quite as accentuated as say the Spitfire's middle canopy, but you get some idea what I mean here).

For the final construction stage it was a matter of adding on the detailing bits and pieces. The belly radiator is two-piece and is hampered a little by a bit of flash and nasty sprue lugs once detached. Clean these up and affix the two parts together, file the undersurface mating area where it affixes to the belly and the radiator goes on well. There is a small panel outline just visible on the belly surface you can use as a reference point for affixing the radiator in place and the instructions also provide some small inset diagrams to help as well. Apart from the underfuselage pinto pipe (or whatever you call it! - hook like antenna) there are no styrene masts or antenna to include on the kit, and only the pinto pipe (alternative piece) and upperfuselage DF Loop mast are even provided for on the brass etched set. I therefore used stretched sprue for the mast and Port Wing pitot tube as shown on the instruction sheet. For those who build a wheels up model, in spite of the fact they are perhaps a touch thick, the upper halves of the main undercarriage struts (part 17) could be used here also as antenna masts.

Summary on Construction:
Showing all the traits of a limited run injection kit this is certainly one for experienced modellers or those with some MPM kits already under their belt. All the parts benefited from preparatory filing and/or sanding and resultant gaps around the wings needed filler. Sprue lugs were very thick and crude and you needed to carefully remove parts from the sprue with cutters only, and then file/sand smooth. Some small bits of flash also had to be cleaned from the parts and all the mating surfaces had to be sanded to optimise the adhering process. But having said all that, I actually found construction pleasant and very easy to do considering these limitations and I wonder whether the fact that all these limited run kits have finally paid their due as I had no problems constructing this kit at all. Each to his own of course, but it seems if you take your time and double check fits etc you will find this kit fairly straight forward construction-wise.

Versions, Painting & Schemes:
There are two aircraft, both in overall upper black green with light blue undersides (RLM 70 and 65 respectively), from a "speculative" unit based in Germany, Spring 1940. Only the large fuselage code numbers (13 and 21) indicate the differences between the two aircraft. Using Humbrols 91 and 65 respectively, my He 100 was painted accordingly after an undercoat of Primer was applied over the whole model.

However, since there is a fair amount of speculation involved with this kit anyway there is no reason why the modeller may not want to reproduce another version. In reference books and as alluded to in the Aircraft paragraph above, I've also seen artistic impressions of this aircraft done up in a snow coloured scheme, a splinter camouflage and mottled like the Bf-109's of the era in order to confuse the Allies. So one could dabble in any of these alternative schemes, and just go for the insignia decals supplied on the decal sheet!

Decals:
These are produced by Propagteam and are in very good register. They are also thin and have a matt appearance and while there are no swastikas provided, there are four decals shaped like an incomplete "5" (without the top line of the number or curves of course) which can be affixed together to form a swastika. Having had a vast amount of experience in using Propagteam decals I was prepared for the curling and possible disintegration but actually had absolutely no problems with these decals at all, they went on easily and could be moved around into their exact location before leaving to dry, something you can't seem to do with their decals most of the time. Soaking time was kept to a minimum and they did carry a bit of excess carrier film, so perhaps this was a trait of their decals a little earlier on. Overall no problems whatsoever.

Accuracy:
Comparing my references and MPM instruction sheet there is a little bit of conflict about the exact length and span of the aircraft with just over an inch difference between my sources in each of the two dimension categories. For the sake of this review I went with a length of 8.19m and span 9.42m, a couple of centimetres more than quoted in the instruction sheet. Converted to 1/72nd this should work out respectively 11.38cm and 13.08cm and the kit meets these measurements almost perfectly. While I do not have a great deal of He 100 reference material I do have enough photos to spot a few errors on the kit that were a bit disappointing. The top of the nose has a tapered down effect which has not been replicated enough on the kit, the tail fin root on the fuselage is a touch sharp on the kit, the rear fuselage section between cockpit and tailfin is also narrow compared to photos (although this last one could be due to angle of photography and so forth). But the main bone of contention is the canopy. This is probably one of those situations where the exact mold of the canopy would be hard to replicate in vacform and separate injection molded pieces should have been the way to go. The middle canopy section should be bulbous (a bit like the Spitfire), the rear canopy section should be slightly lower and flatter than the middle and the windscreen has a distinctive edge to the front of it. The vacform is of course more sleeker, although once the frames were painted on the windscreen does seem to have a front edge to it a bit more.

Overall:
A kit with all the traits of a limited run mold that needs solid preparation of parts prior to assembly and the removal of flash and ejector pin stubs which is not suitable for the novice modeller, and is more aimed at those with a few MPM type kits under their belt. I really enjoyed assembling this kit and actually found it extremely quick and simple to do taking into account the above notes. The only letdown is in the accuracy department, a better depiction of the nose taper and an injection molded three piece canopy would have made this kit a winner. I would still recommend it to those of you experienced with limited run molds and not hung up on these inaccuracies for a unique and different subject in the Luftwaffe collection.

Note: the following related reviews links have not been updated since early 2000's - more kit reviews of this aircraft may now be on SMAKR, not reflected below. Refer to the Index for other kits of this type.

Related Reviews:-

HiPM 1/48 Heinkel He-100D
MPM 1/72 Heinkel He 100 (Richard Stracey)

Related INBOX Reviews:-

MPM 1/72 Heinkel He 100

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