Me 163 kits and accessories

The 1965 box of the Lindberg kit can be seen below. The front was found on Ebay by Ruediger Landmann, while the rear side was supplied by Gilbert Haentjens. The He 162, Fw 190D and He 100 shown on the rear side were issued at about the same time as the Komet model.

As can be expected for a model of almost 40 years old, it has a large number of inaccuracies. The wing planform appears incorrect, with a too large wingtip chord. The wing has no twist at all, where it should have some 7 degrees of twist. Interestingly, each wing has four Jägerfaust launch tubes, in the position shown by the cover art of Mano Ziegler's book (most likely incorrect). The flaps are displaced outboard. The fairing of the tail skid bay is too small, and the lower fuselage fairing should be deeper the rear end. The model is covered with rivets, even the wooden wings. The generator prop on the nose is missing. The canopy is thick, and the armored glass panel is missing. The triangular rear view windows are solid plastic, and are to be painted.

The decal sheet is very limited: it contains six iron crosses, two codes '4', two WNr 163107 (non-existent) and two 'Baron von Munchhausen' badges (in black and white). Decals are poorly printed and thick. Curiously, no swastikas are included, nor shown on the box art, while political correctness still had to be invented in 1965.

Part of the instruction sheet, also found on Ebay.

A much less common box-art is seen below, found on Ebay. One of this type of boxes was said to have a 1974 date printed on.

The box below (found on Ebay) reportedly had a 1975 mark, and seems to be equally rare. The strangle angle of the B-17 makes more sense if you compare it to the box art shown above.

The box art of the 1990's reissue of the Lindberg kit, found on Ebay.

Modeling Madness has short building report. Also see the page about the Revell reissue.