Spanish Henshel

Airfix Hs.123A 24.5. ‘Teufel’ (Devil) of Stukakette 88, Legion Condor, Spain, 1938

The Subject

The Henshel Hs.123 was a bit of an interim type meant to fill the gap between Ernst Udet’s vision of a dive bomber and the delivery of the Junkers Ju.87.  Consequently only 250 were built even though it served well not only during the Spanish Civil War but well into World War II, finally being retired from Luftwaffe use after the Battle of Kursk. 

This model represents one of the 16 aircraft ultimately sent to Spain (5 as part of the Legion Condor, and 11 to the Ejercito del Aire (Spanish Air Force) where it poorly performed as a tactical bomber but was well like as a ground support aircraft where accuracy was more critical than bomb load.

The Model

This is the Airfix kit first released in 1970 as a bagged kit.  Mine is one of these initial bagged kits, all subsequent releases were in a box.  All details are raised, typical for kits of that timeframe, and cockpit detail is minimal as the modeler is expected to paint and insert a pilot that would hide that fact.

Construction was straight forward, my objective was to quickly get to the point of exterior painting.  I easily achieved that on my first day with this kit.  Seams were addressed with Vallejo acrylic filler, which allowed me to use a damp cotton bud to remove excess filler and not be concerned with losing details as a result of sanding.

Once ready for paint, I primed (using a brush) Vallejo primer to give the Vallejo paint something to stick to.  Unfortunately, I did not document which paints were what color, but I seem to remember the brown, green, and light blue were Model Air colors, and the white and light gray were Model Color.  Each required anywhere from 2-5 coats (less for dark colors, more for the light ones) and surprisingly even the white and light gray covered well enough when I had to touch up the edges.  The prop was painted with Metal Color Aluminum.  I’m a patient modeler nowadays and each color was applied a day after the previous color to give them plenty of time to dry and cure so that masking would not be an issue.  

I masked the patterns using Tamiya Tape, burnishing down the edges using a wooden cocktail stick.  None of the paints lifted as a result of masking.  The windscreen was hand painted and the tip of a cocktail stick used to clean up the clear bit.

Decals were of course unusable, so I pulled out my sheet of XtraDecal 72-274 Spanish Civil War Part 1 collection.  They went on beautifully with a little Microsol/set applied to help them settle down.

Summary

Hot on the heels of my Republican Rata post is this Nationalist Henschel.  I try to learn something new from every model I complete (even the ones I throw out for that matter).  This taught me that brushing Vallejo paints (Model Air, Model Color, Metal Color) is actually quite easy.