Aircraft history

The genesis of the Me 323 Gigant (giant) transport was in a 1940 German requirement for a large assault glider. The DFS 230 light glider had already proven it's worth in the famous attack on the Eban-Emael fort in Belgium (the first ever assault by gliderborne troops), and would later be used successfully in the Crete invasion in 1941. However, the prospective invasion of Great Britain focused minds on the need to be able to airlift vehicles and other heavy equipment as part of an initial assault wave. Although 'Sealion' was cancelled, the requirement was still a valid one with the focus now on the forthcoming invasion of the USSR. On October 18th 1940, Junkers and Messerschmitt were given just 14 days to submit a proposal for a large transport glider. The emphasis was still very much on the assault role: the ambitious requirement was to be able to carry either an 88-mm gun and half-track tractor, or a PzKpfw IV medium tank. The Junkers Ju 322 'Mammut' reached prototype form, but was completely unsatisfactory and was scrapped. The Messerschmitt was originally designated the Me 261w, was then changed to Me 263, eventually becoming the Me 321.

The initial production order was for 200 Me 321's. Some sources say that all 200 were delivered, other say only 150. The last 100 had an enlarged flight deck to allow for a side-by-side pilot/co-pilot arrangement - the early machines had just one pilot. With a construction mainly of tubular steel, the glider was enormous, with a length of 28.5 m and a wingspan of almost twice that. Rather like the Me 163 Komet, the Me 321 had a detachable wheeled dolly for take-off, and a skid arrangement for landing. Given the lack of heavy bombers and powered cargo aircraft available to the Luftwaffe, getting the glider airborne was always problematic. Underwing RATO packs for take-off were only a partial solution. One towing option was the Troikaschlepp: three Bf 110's towing the glider together, with the centre Bf 110 being 20 m ahead of the other two. This was a highly dangerous arrangement, and one test ended in utter disaster with the loss of all four aircraft and crew, and all 120 troops on board the Me 321. A better solution was the Heinkel He 111 Z (Zwilling, or twin), which involved two He 111's joined together with a new central section and a fifth engine. Although the Me 321 saw considerable service, it was never used for a Maltese invasion, or for any other such undertakings.

The business end of the Me 323. It could transport up to 120 fully-equipped troops.

Early in 1941, the decision had been taken to produce a motorized variant of the Me 321. It was now realised that a serious heavy-lift requirement would exist outside the specialized assault role, and that a huge glider that needed specialised towing aircraft, rocket packs and other equipment was simply not the answer. After much study, it was decided to fit six French Gnome-Rhone GR14N engines. These were in production and readily available, and could easily be bolted on the wing, which consequently needed to be strengthened. A cabin for a flight engineer was added in each wing between the inboard and centre engines, although the pilot could override each engineer’s decision on engine and propeller control. A brand-new permanent landing gear was bolted on to the side of each fuselage, and gave the resulting Me 323 superb rough-field performance. Compared to the Me 321, the Me 323 had a much-reduced payload of between 10 - 12 tonnes, which was the price that had to be paid for an aircraft that could operate autonomously. Even with the engines, RATO packs were still frequently used.

An Me 323 unloading a tank destroyer based on a PzKpfw II tank chassis. This is almost certainly a Marder II, equipped with a 75 mm PAK 40 gun. At around 11 tonnes, this would be close to the limit of the Me 323's theoretical payload - in practice, the limits were probably exceeded on many occasions, with consequent reductions in safety margins. I am not aware of an injection-molded kit of the Marder II in 1/72 scale, but there are still plenty of vehicles that could be used with an Me 323 kit. If Italeri speeded up the re-release of the huge ESCI back-catalog at their disposal, then the choice would be greater still.

The Kit

The Price

The first time I bought this kit it came with a price tag of IR£ 13, if I remember correctly - that would have been slightly less in UK Sterling terms. Although I had just entered University, I still had enough money (and time!) to devote to modelling. This time round, I bought the kit from Hannants, where it costs STG £ 25. I ordered it through my local model shop, with the cost working out at 43 Euro - very acceptable, given factors such as a higher Irish VAT rate and transport and handling costs. Now that the Euro is just beginning (finally !!) to appreciate against Sterling and the US dollar, I'll be seeing an improvement price-wise at my end. Based on some loose assumptions, I calculate that the annual average price increase was in the order of 5% for the Gigant to get from what I originally paid for it to its current price level. That's not too bad, given the declining popularity of the hobby over that time, which would tend to push prices up anyway.

Old boxart, showing the green/brown camouflage scheme.

The Package

Beyond a certain price point, Italeri always use a two-piece box, and this kit is obviously no exception. The box is 44cm x 27 cm x 10.5 cm in size, and it's barely big enough to hold the contents. There are six main sprues molded in light grey - I think it was green plastic the first time around - and one transparent sprue. There are between 340 - 350 parts in the kit. I couldn't really be bothered about being more precise than that, except to say that almost every last part can be used in building this kit. The only options are the eight underwing RATO packs (to use or not to use ..), and to build the clamshell front doors in open or closed position. Unfortunately, some of the pieces had come loose in the box in transit. On some of their newest helicopter kits, Italeri have at least sealed the transparent sprue in a plastic bag, but not here. Very probably, this item has been in stock for some time, and is not a brand new example - maybe Hannants are right about the 'discontinued' status.

The current box art mistakenly refers to an 'Me 321' - actually an Me-321, as Italeri have always been prone to throwing in a '-' symbol where it shouldn't be, and thus tend to make a dog's dinner of US Navy classifications in particular. Anyway, this is the Me 323 kit (Italeri #104). The Me 321 kit is # 115 in the Italeri catalogue, and the accompanying He 111 Z 'Zwilling' tug is #119. The Me 321 kit never really appealed to me, as it was (and is) the same price as the Me 323 kit, but with no engines and a much-simplified undercarriage. Even though the Me 321 offered the chance to complete a diorama with a PzKpfw IV medium tank rolling down the ramp, I was never sufficiently tempted.

The molds

Instruction leaflet and decals

The instruction leaflet is in the current Italeri style, and is physically very large - not quite A4-wide, but more than A4-high, with 10 pages in total. Gone from the old instructions are the pictures of the actual aircraft and completed models. Also gone are the RLM paint codes, to be replaced by the combination of ModelMaster and FS codes, which are next to useless for this subject matter. Also missing from the current leaflet are some vital details regarding engine and propeller construction, which were present in the old leaflet. I'll go over those issues later. Apart from that, the leaflet is very well laid out and easy to follow. I really like the Italeri philosophy of a few main construction steps, with insets and sub-steps where necessary. Even with a kit of this size, it's still very easy to follow. Personally speaking, I don't like the Revell style of breaking down the construction into an inordinate amount of steps, as if to say that there is only one sequence of construction possible in order to build the kit.

Construction Issues

The first phase of construction is easy: add all the side-windows to the fuselage halves, along with the two-part side door on each side. These could easily be left open, but the instructions don't suggest that. The interior walls should be painted RLM 02 grey/green (Humbrol 31). The next step is to cement the fuselage halves together, along with the floor parts (natural wood colour), and the upper framing (RLM 02 again). This looks a bit tricky, but I don't remember it causing me serious trouble the first time I built the kit. The front top area of the fuselage is left open with the internal frame visible - the wing will later be placed on top of this area.

The next step is to assemble and attach the main undercarriage assemblies and fairings. Each has a large three-wheel rear bogie and a smaller two-wheel front unit. These are easy to build. The problem is in trying to attach them to the fuselage. As the fuselage is (apparently) the same as that used in the Me 321 kit, there are no attachment holes on the fuselage side. Instead, there are small markings on each side indicating where to affix the assemblies directly onto the surface. Remember that these units must hold the entire weight of the completed kit, and the fuselage/bogie joins need to be very secure. Over the bogies go the two-piece fairings, which must also be aligned with markings on the fuselage, and which I remember as being a very tight fit. This has an upside as it helps to keep the bogies securely in place. The instructions next suggest that the front doors should be built and attached to the fuselage. If you want to portray the model with the doors open, then I wouldn't attach them at this point - there is some heavy duty work in attaching the main wing section first, and the delicately attached open doors might get in the way.

Italeri have correctly broken down the wing into three parts: a central section, which will hold the engines, RATO packs and flaps, and the outer sections with the ailerons. There is a convenient break at the aileron/flap border, where the outer wing section has some dihedral. The central wing assembly has the windows for the engineers, but no internal detail. The completed section fits on top of the open front top section of the fuselage - remember to insert the completed cockpit assembly first! There is also the final upper section of fuselage, with the final two machine guns in 'mid-upper' blister positions - the other six guns are distributed in and around the nose area (Note: if you had hoped to see the over-wing turrets, forget it - the low-drag EDL 151 turrets were only fitted in the E-variant). After letting everything set, it's probably best to attach the main support struts first, before moving on to the outer wings, flaps and ailerons. Given the size and weight of some of these parts, great attention (and patience) will be required to get it all completed correctly.

Much of the rest of the kit involves the attachment of a plethora of control rods, horn balances and other similar items. The RATO packs are easy - as with many other parts, they must be cemented flush onto the wing surface where the alignment marks indicate. One error that I encountered the first time around is still present: the upper and lower tail plane support struts have been mixed up. The upper struts are longer, requiring the use of the longer struts (parts #103), with the shorter struts (#98) being used beneath. The instructions say the exact opposite. The tail planes are angled slightly upwards, which is correct.

There is also a problem with the propellers, but this time it's because of an 'improvement' in the revised instruction leaflet. The Me 323 D-1 had 'handed' engines and propellers, and different set of propellers are included in the kit. However, all six units have the same part number (# 124), and there is absolutely no indication which handed configuration should be used. On the old version of the relevant sprue diagram (new version shown above), the three units on the outside of the sprue were 'D' (right/starboard), and the inner set were 'S' (left/port). This information was also referred to in the actual construction guide. Of course, if all the propeller parts have become separated from the sprues (as happened to me), then you still have a problem. Again, the old instructions come to the rescue, as they included a head-on end view, which illustrates the rotation of the blades. This agrees with just about any picture that shows the blades close enough up. I am including the diagram here - to make it useful, I had to keep the image quite large, so I split it down the middle into separate right and left parts.

Head-on view only included in old instructions. Note that the engines are not spaced evenly apart, which is correct.

Miscellaneous Accuracy and Detail Concerns

Because of the commonality with the Me 321 kit, there seem to be a few minor details missing - but no more than that. For example, there should be some panel lines on each wing around where each engine nacelle is attached to the wing - these are actually shown on the painting guide. The upper fuselage decking between the wings (part # 56) does not show the covered fabric effect, which is seen, not only on reference plates, but also on the painting guide in this kit. This is one of those parts that are specific to the Me 323 kit, as it incorporates the blister gun positions not present in the Me 321. There are two other minor items, both of which are correctly illustrated on the cover artwork, but which are both missing from the actual kit. These are illustrated in the picture below:

Painting and Decal Options

The current package provides two subject options: one for the Russian front, and one for Tunisia. Both have the exact same camouflage paint scheme, differing only in minor details such as the white or yellow theatre markings. Ignoring the FS/Modelmaster paint codes, the scheme would obviously be the standard one of RLM 70 Dark Green/ RLM 71 Green over RLM 65 Light Blue.

However, that's not quite it. Although Me 323's did use this scheme, more interesting schemes were also applied. One of the subjects in the old kit is the same Tunisian aircraft (RW+1J) currently offered, but with a scheme of RLM 71 with large patches of RLM 79 Sand Gelb. A picture of this scheme on a completed kit (from the instructions) is shown here - note the position and size of the Swastika, were it to be applied:

Final Thoughts

References

My printed references were restricted to just two standard reference works:

• Warplanes of the Luftwaffe (produced by the World Air Power Journal), edited by David Donald.
• The Concise Guide to Axis Aircraft of World War II, by David Mondey.