Academy 1/72 Messerschmitt Me 163B/S Komet

ACADEMY 1:72 MESSERSCHMITT ME 163B/S KOMET

Reviewer: Mark B (SMAKR Webmaster) (smakr1@optusnet.com.au)
Kit Built + Review Submitted: 5 December 2008

Kit Details:

Academy FA174-5000 #1673 - 1/72 Me-163B/S Komet

Aircraft History:

(Kevin Ronayne review) - The Me 163 stands apart in aviation history, as the only rocket-powered manned combat aircraft ever to see service. The story of the Komet is fascinating and very long. It is far too detailed for this brief summary to do justice to the aircraft. The Komet was the brainchild of Dr. Alexander Lippisch, who started building tailless gliders in 1926, and over the next decade also became involved in rocket propulsion. In 1937, he was asked to develop a manned aircraft to be powered by a newly developed rocket motor. At this point, the story gets really complicated, involving Heinkel, Messerschmitt and the German Glider research institute (DFS). To cut a long story short, by late 1939 Lippisch had developed the all-wooden DFS 194 glider for research purposes. It was decided to fit it with a small rocket engine, and on June 3 1940, the first flight was made. The powered DFS 194 had excellent handling, extraordinary climb rate and level speed of almost 550 kmh. The pilot was Heini Dittmar, a famous glider pilot who would be the main pilot in the Komet development programme. With a more powerful Walter rocket motor now available, development could now proceed on a sturdier design with a metal fuselage. It was at this point that the designation Me 163 was assigned.

The first Me 163 (towed by a Bf 110) proved to be such a good glider that during trials in the spring of 1941, it was very difficult to land. The first rocket-powered flight took place on the 13th August 1941, and the aircraft was estimated to have exceeded 800 kmh. Soon, the aircraft was flying even faster, and eventually Dittmar was to experience violent control problems when flying at over 1,000 kmh. This was the first encounter with compressibility, a phenomenon that is encountered as an aircraft approaches Mach 1. Modifications to the surface controls helped to alleviate this problem, and the Komet was judged by at least one very experienced pilot to handle extremely well at high speed.

Other problems were to remain right throughout the development and service life, and these centred around the highly volatile rocket fuel and the hair-raising take-off and landing routines. Ground crew and pilots eventually had to wear protective asbestos coverings, as some of the unstable rocket fuel compounds could cause horrific injuries if they came into contact with human skin. The danger of a mishap with the fuel was compounded by the possibility of an accident during take-off. It was not unknown for the detachable dolly to bounce off the ground and hit the aircraft just after being released, which could have catastrophic consequences. Landing on the lowered tailskid at a precise speed into the wind required a high degree of skill, especially so if there was any fuel left in the tanks. Most of the early pilots were of above average skill, which would have been an untenable situation in the long run, as experienced pilots were becoming increasingly scarce.

The first Komet unit (I/JG400) became operational in late July 1944, although the Allies had become aware of the aircraft in late 1943. The Komet had a very short range, but with their climb rate could be used to protect high-value installations such as oil refineries. A textbook combat mission would involve a take-off and rapid climb to 12,000m, followed by a couple of unpowered diving attacks through bomber formations - a head-on powered attack would involve a closing speed so fast that hitting a target would have been very difficult. After each attack, the pilot would relight the engine and climb to maximum altitude before cutting the engine and starting another attack. Standard armament was a Mk 108 30mm cannon in each wing root with 60 rounds per cannon - enough for a couple of firing passes. The aircraft would then glide downwards to land at the nearest base. In reality, the Komet enjoyed very little success and losses were high. 80% of losses occurred during take-off and landing - most of those were probably during landing. Despite having several hundred Komets in service during 1945, the Germans found it difficult to engage the Allies, as the latter knew where the Komet bases were and could generally avoid them. The Germans planned to build an in-depth defence system using the Komet, but were unable to do so.

Attempts were made to improve the Komet design, with conventional undercarriage and better motors. Alternative armaments had been tried out from early in the Me 163 development phase, but these rarely came to anything.

The Kit:

Released earlier this decade this is a new tooling example of the Komet and not one of Academy's older kits. The kit includes the plane and also the towing tractor, following Heller's example of the 70's. Inside the box there are just over 50 parts on three sprues molded in light grey, one sprue making up the tractor. There is a small clear sprue containing 5 nicely molded parts, including the second canopy to model the Me-163S two seat version. The parts are lovely and crisp and contain engraved panel lines with a decent amount of surface and other detail included. The parts are well packaged, coming in plastic bags and separately bagged decals and clear sprue.

Instructions:

In the now typical Academy four-folded out pamphlet it opens up with the brief history in English, German, Japanese and Korean. The centre spread of the fold out includes 9 assembly steps, although step 8 is for the tractor, and step 9 just shows the finished kit. Along the bottom of the centre spread is modelling symbols and number referenced painting information, although these are just names of generic colours, with a couple of RLM quotes - no paint manufacturer is quoted. Flipping the instruction sheet over are four view diagrams of the three versions the kit provides for and a detailed sprue map. The instructions also clearly label sub assemblies depending on which of the three versions you are building from this kit as there is obviously the different cockpit but also tailwheel housings etc.

Construction:

There are two parts to the construction process, one being the aircraft itself and the other being the towing vehicle. The vehicle was constructed after the Komet. There's also another aspect of construction, deciding right up whether to model the Me-163B single seater fighter, or the Me 163S trainer. Having built fighter versions in the past I decided that an Me-163S would look a little different on the modelling display shelf and thus went with this.

First up of course is the cockpit and for this scale and this sized aircraft, Academy provide a reasonable amount of detail. The cockpit tub has modestly molded side console detail and rudder pedals on the floor, and separate instrument panels for both cockpits also having generic console detail provided. These were painted in black and I used aluminium dry brushing technique to bring out the instrumentation. The cockpit itself was painted in [Humbrol] H92 which is an equivalent match for RLM66, as were the wheel hubs and other internal areas. Also in the cockpit the kit supplies a control column and a throttle stick for both crew members and a bucket seat which is affixed to a rear armour plate protective bulkhead.

The assembled cockpit unit was affixed inside the fuselage halves on top of the main landing gear ceiling, a separate component installed at the same time. The fuselage halves affix together very nicely and while drying, the main wings and tail unit are sub assembled. The former is made up of lower and upper halves with a separate leading edge slot - be careful you affix these to the correct wing. The tail unit traps in the tiny exhaust cone which was pre-painted, and also has two types of tail wheels to install, one faired and one unfaired. By the alignment pins inside the tail unit, these can be installed in the deployed or wheels-up position. On one of the very few occasions I had already decided to display this model in wheels down (which is befitting since it comes with the trowing tractor).

The wings and tail unit are added to the fuselage and all fit very well, except there is a small amount of sanding needed to blend the tail unit into the smooth contours of the fuselage. The main landing gear is added to the skid which itself is installed into the landing gear area - a very tight fit, almost not needing glue. You will need to remove the upper part of the landing skid alignment pins as shown in the instructions. The interior of the landing bay was painted RLM 66 (H92) and the landing gear itself was painted black in accordance with advice in the instructions. Although grainy photos I have sugeste the landing skid could be painted in the same colour as the lower undersides.

A small HUD is provided for the cockpit and the three part canopy was installed from the back part first to the windscreen and this ended up fitting very nicely indeed. The cockpit it appears can be displayed open. Then sadly, construction was finished!

But thankfully there was still a little bit more to go with the towing tractor. I found I had to study the instructions to work out how to install the wheel assembly of the tractor and in hindsight, all you need to do is assemble the front part of the tractor first. This fits together like a glove. The towing component however was much more fiddly and a little tricky. Make sure the rear tracked wheels are orientated the right way (the attachment pins are at the top). The whole suspension unit was pretty fiddly also and in spite of my best efforts, I achieved less than a perfect result. The front section of the towing unit where everything meets needed to be assembled together (bit like the twin booms of P-38 type aircraft) in order for everything to fit together properly. I had aspirations of having the towing unit and the tractor itself hook up by the tow bar and not cemented together, but those aspirations died when the towing vehicle kept falling backwards (ie: just like an aircraft tail-sitting) so I had to glue the two components of the vehicle together. In the end it still looked nice!

Colour Schemes:

The kit provides three possible subjects to produce with this kit:

A B-1a of the 1st Staffel/JG 400. This is the aircraft illustrated on the box artwork.
Another B-1a, this time from the 2nd Staffel/JG 400, with the famous rocket-powered flea badge on the nose.
A two-seat 'S' aircraft of JG 400 - no more specific information is supplied. There is a question mark over whether or not this version ever actually flew.

No time period or location is given for any of the subjects. All aircraft carry the 'standard' 1944 Luftflotte Reich fighter camouflage scheme of RLM 81/RLM 82 over RLM 76. The first and third subjects have the splinter camouflage on the fuselage upper surfaces and RLM 82 mottling on the fin/rudder only. The 2/JG 400 subject features mottling all over the fuselage, except for the 'belly' area.

Several photos do indicate that on some JG 400 aircraft, mottle appears near the nose on the underside areas so obviously this ultimately depends on the aircraft being modelled. For the two seat version, it is simply RLM 81/82 over 76 undersides as detailed in the instructions. For the closest matches from Humbrol I used H155 (Olive)/H105 (Green) and mixed equal parts of H87 (Steel Grey)/H34 (White) for the undersides. The towing vehicle was painted in a light Panzer Grey colour and I picked out some of the detail with aluminium just to add some interest.

Decals:

The modest sized decal sheet contains the usual roundels but also includes a reasonable amount of stencilling. However, it does not include swastikas - something I think is beyond reproach now and should always be included for historical and replica purposes. The register is not too bad for the larger parts, but there is a white edging on the bottom of the wing crosses so I used some spares. The smaller decals are blurry and unreadable. They are of a glossy type finish and of probably just over a medium thickness. I used Gunze Sangyo setting solution and found the decals to be very easy to apply, however, when using only water I found them hard to move, so setting solution was needed. The decal sheet includes two rows of numbers 0-9 enabling you to presumably depict a different aircraft serial number for one of the Me-163Bs in the kit. Having chosen the Me-163S model there were not a great deal of decals to apply and thankfully an aftermarket set of swastikas was available in my spares to use on this kit. I had to make sure I selected the right white bordered swastika and of the appropriate size.

Accuracy:

Overall the aircraft stacks up very well in this scale to accuracy. My measurements indicate the span is underscale a couple off mm whereas the length is spot on, and it looks, feels and eats like an Me 163S. I note in Kevin Ronayne's review he talks of a website providing details about the accuracy of this kit, so I would refer you there to follow up on this. Personally I am very happy with this kit. The towing tractor is not too bad a replica but from the photos I have it is not absolutely definitive in accuracy, missing front headlights and a mishaped wheel guard and a lack of molded hydraulics on the trailer itself.

Overall Recommendation:

I am lead to believe in various forums that this Academy kit is the definitive Me 163 in this scale, and after building this kit I would have to agree as it looks the part in an extremely convincing fashion. This kit reminded me of those delightful Revell new tooling's and went together just as easily earlier this decade. The plane itself was constructed very quickly and went together very well. The tractor was a bit fiddly and needed a bit of patience to put together, but still within the scope of most novice modellers. For all the reasons including ease, accuracy and of course value for money, I don't think you can do any better than this Academy kit. Recommended for all modelling skills.

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