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Udet's V-14

Showing off Emil

The Zürich‑Dübendorf aviation meet of 1937 was designed to showcase the latest in European aircraft designs for the Swiss military. One of the stars of the show was surely Ernst Udet's wine red Bf-109 V-14, which although it crashed during the race, so impressed the Swiss authorities, that they ordered 80 Bf-109E aircraft to equip the Swiss Air Force.

the model

The model's cockpit is Hasegawa plus some Eduard and an Ultracast seat. I removed the oxygen bottle and blanked that part of the right side wall off.

The conversion is intended for the Tamiya kit, but I had a Hasegawa and did not want to buy another kit for the conversion. It needs a lot of work to make it fit to the Hasegawa kit. Especially the cooler rear end to wing/fuselage transition is much more narrow on Tamiyas 109. Decals worked flawlessly. I mixed my own wine red as I found the suggested Gunze H 47 too bright. Also the red is questioned by some who state that record aircraft were blue or grey and Udet landed with a red Bf 108 in Dübendorf (mentioned in a swiss newspaper). I personally tend to believe in the red aircraft as Udet really liked that colour and he was a ww1 hero and had enough influence to paint his a/c as he likes it. We will never know unless a colour photo appears ;)

I strongly suggest to read J-Ls feature if someone is doing this conversion (using the Tamiya base kit would be a good idea).