1:48 Bf 109D

The Dora, the last Messerschmitt with a Jumo engine

Before the inverted Daimler-Benz twelve-cylinder settled into the nose of the Bf 109, the fighter was powered by the Jumo 210 engine with markedly lower output. The D form was the most numerous of these early machines, and even so only a few hundred were made. In the autumn of 1939 it still flitted over Poland, but newer versions promptly pushed it into the second line, to night patrols and to training units. It is precisely those early machines that have a silhouette the later Messerschmitts lost.

More frame than glass

The glazing of the early 109 divides into three firmly set units. At the front is a low windscreen glued up from three flat panes, in the middle sits the main cover hinged to the right-hand side and at the rear follows a fixed part with triangular side windows. What is characteristic is that in this scale the frames have a width similar to the areas between them. The modeler therefore does not mask a few large areas but assembles a mosaic from strips shorter than two millimeters, on which cutting by hand cannot keep the same thickness. Cut film turns this task from an hour of patience into a few minutes of work with tweezers.

In the package

• glazing masks in a form for the outer and the inner side of the parts
• two sheets for sprayed national crosses
• supplementary decals

A frame painted a different shade inside is clearly apparent on this generation of fighters, because the hinged cover leaves the whole interior in view. The carrier is a self-adhesive sheet that you lift off once the paint has dried with no adhesive residue and with no risk of tearing off the fresh paint.