1:32 Bf 109F4 Trop

Sand overhead, sky under the wings

The tropical Messerschmitt went off to North Africa in a completely different palette from its European siblings. Instead of gray-green tones it got a single warm sand shade above and a light blue below, because over the desert the only thing that counts is whether the aircraft merges with the rock or with the sky. The white bands around the rear and the white wingtips had nothing to do with concealment; that was a Mediterranean recognition marking. The sun then did its work: within a few weeks the sand paint faded to a lighter tone and in the places where the ground crew climbed over it the original European color showed through from under the finish.

Box contents

Included are masks for the cockpit glazing cut for the outer as well as the inner side, two masks for the national insignia, a sheet of decals and a pair of metal barrels for the machine guns above the engine. It is those two stubs projecting from the engine cowling that tend to be the thickest on plastic parts, and metal makes them as thin as they should be.

Why this machine in particular

The F-4 version was the peak of the so-called Friedrich, the aerodynamically cleanest form of the Bf 109. In the desert, though, its virtues were worn down by sand in the engine and by the distances a fighter with a short range could hardly cover. Displays of machines from the Mediterranean therefore look different from the Channel ones.

A note on the build

Sand finishes take a lot of work with dirt and dust, but under all of that there has to be a clean edge around the cockpit frames. Let the paint cure thoroughly before applying the film so that it does not tear when it is lifted off. The masks are based on the shapes of the Hasegawa kit in this scale, and neither a plastic model nor resin accessories are included.