1:32 Bf 109E-1

Splinter camouflage is geometry, not chance

The Bf 109E-1 entered service in the color system that the Luftwaffe introduced at the end of the 1930s: two dark greens on the upper surfaces and light blue below. The upper pattern was not painted by eye, though. It was made up of straight sections that formed the so-called splinter field, and it was mirror-symmetrical about the longitudinal axis on both halves of the aircraft. For the workshop that was an advantage, because it could be traced from a master, and for a modeler today the advantage is the same: this is a pattern that can be planned in advance.

How a hard transition is made

A hard edge between the two green shades comes from masking the neighboring field and spraying perpendicular to the surface. If you spray at an angle, the paint gets under the edge of the mask and the line is smeared. Tape or thin paper is used, pressed down only along the edge, and the rest of the area is covered loosely. It is precisely this kind of finish that makes the early E-1 a rewarding model. On later aircraft hard edges were abandoned and the boundaries blurred, so the same trick can no longer be used.

Set contents

The cockpit of the early Emil has many frames and small panes, so masking by hand takes longer than the spraying itself. Cutouts in film shorten that work and keep the frame width the same on both sides. The set handles the glazing from both faces and adds masks for spraying the national insignia. In a large scale a small inaccuracy in a frame is also magnified along with the model, so measuring by hand does not pay. Neither the model itself nor paints are in the box.