1:32 He 111P

A glazed nose as a recognition feature

In 1938 the P version received an entirely new nose section without a stepped windscreen. Instead of a conventional cockpit, a continuous glass nose divided by a net of frames arched in front of the pilot, and the gunner's station was offset to one side so that the pilot could see ahead. The power came from the liquid-cooled inverted V12 Daimler-Benz 601 series engines, which set this version apart from the later and more numerous variant with Junkers powerplants.

Service

Machines of this version took part in the fighting over Poland in 1939 and a year later bore the main weight of the raids over Britain. It was then that the speed the type had been proud of in the 1930s proved no longer enough, and the crews paid a high price.

Why you cannot do without masks in a large scale

A model with a span of over half a meter has glazing divided into dozens of panes, and every frame is of a different width and a different curvature. Cutting that many strips of tape means several evenings of work, and one uneven edge is enough to make the whole nose look crooked. Die-cut self-adhesive parts shorten this part of the build to a single afternoon and guarantee that the frames will be the same on both sides. Besides the glazing, the set also deals with the wheels, where in this scale the boundary between tire and hub is practically impossible to do cleanly with a brush. The shapes are based on the kit from Revell, so the parts seat on the edge of the frame without any extra trimming with scissors and without adding strips in the corners.