Me 163 kits and accessories

Finished models

Christian Meyerhoff's 'White 10' Kai Reckstadt's 'White 54' Roland Sachsenhofer's 'White 4'

Aircraft Resource Center has two articles on the Hasegawa model:

IPMS Singapore has not one but two photos of what looks like the Hasegawa Komet as PK+QL in its report on the IPMS Singapore 3rd Anniversary contest held in 2001.


Box art

Two variations of the box art of the Hasegawa 1/32 kit.




Catalog models

A picture of the completed kit from the 1992 catalog. The colors of the model appear to be as follows: wings in RLM 81/82, fuselage completely in RLM 76, mottled with RLM 81 and 82 (?)

From the 1980 catalog, another picture of the completed kit. It shows the Me 163B-0 '54', a US captured Komet that is shown in a number of pictures. The posure of the model is not correct: the tail wheel spring looks completely deflated, as often occurs in museums. It's difficult to guess the colors: fusalage looks RLM76 with dark green mottling, but I don't know about the wing colors.


Quality

I haven't read much on the quality of the plastic parts of this model. For the time being there is only one problem to report: the canopy has a small hole in the front. This hole is only seen on very few Komets, more specifically Komets that had a BSK 16 gun camera installed. Two examples are 'White 05' and 'White 14'. The hole is slightly offset to the right on the real thing, but centered on the model's canopy.


Markings

Many kits seem to lack instructions on painting the aircraft. As with most older Hasegawa kits, they used to have a color sheet showing the painting options. This sheet appears to be missing in many kits. The scans shown below were supplied by Doug Devers and Danger Atom. Click for bigger versions:



The Japanese captions of the four side views read:

  1. Aircraft of 2 Staffel / JG400, July 1944 Brandis
  2. Aircraft of flight training group
  3. Aircraft of 1 Staffel / JG400
  4. Aircraft of EK16, May 1944 (all red body)

Some comments on these aircraft:

  1. 'White 13' is a rather mysterious aircraft. Quite a few profile drawings exist of this splinter-camouflaged aircraft, yet I know of only one photo which shows this aircraft in the background, with a severe glare obscuring almost all camouflage detail
  2. 'White 54', a problematic aircraft, see the dedicated 'White 54' page for all the details. The Hasegawa 1980 catalog model shown above represents this aircraft
  3. 163107/'White 4' of 1./JG400. This is the strangest of the lot. 163107 looks like a bogus Werknummer; it does not fit in the known Werknummer ranges. A code on the tail (instead of on the fuselage) usually designates a training aircraft, which makes 1./JG400 unlikely. Lastly, I have never seen a picture of this aircraft. I did find an old profile drawing depicting this aircraft in 'The pocket encyclopedia of world aircraft in colour - Fighter - Attack and training aircraft - 1939-1945' by Kenneth Munson, page 96. The caption says it is a Komet of '1./JG400, Zwischenahn, summer 1944'.
  4. V-41/PK+QL, the famous all-red Me 163B-0 of which no photographs exist
This leaves one more option on the decal sheet: 190598 (not 190599 if you ask me) / 'White 10' as shown in this photograph

The Hasegawa decal sheet, kindly supplied by Claus Gustafsen from Danmark. In many European countries the Swastikas are cut out.




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