1:32 Bf 109E-1

Mottling arises without a mask

The summer of 1940 brought the German fighters a change that can be explained by their surroundings. Over the English Channel the fighting took place above water and above a light-colored coastline, where tall dark fuselage sides worked like an inkblot. The answer was to lighten the sides with a paler gray shade and to break them up with irregular dots. This finish is called mottling and it differs from a splinter pattern in the most important respect: it has no edge at all.

A soft transition is sprayed, not masked

The mottles were applied with an airbrush from close range and at low pressure, with no masking whatsoever. The result is therefore different on every example, fine and dense on some aircraft, coarse and sparse elsewhere, because it depended on the mechanic's hand and on how much time was left. A modeler imitates it with a narrowed cone and thinned paint, and the rule is that less is more: dots that are too dark or too regular give the model away at first glance. A test spray on scrap plastic is more useful here than any set of instructions.

What is in the box

While the fuselage sides manage without masking, with the glazing it is the other way round. The canopy frames are narrow and their edges have to be straight, otherwise the cockpit looks clumsy. The cutouts in film are cut to the shape of the frame, they mask the glass from the outside and the inside and so leave both faces transparent. The national insignia masks supplied allow the crosses to be sprayed into the paint, so no glossy edge of a carrier layer is left anywhere. The set contains neither a kit nor paints.