Heinkel He 219B-1 by Dragon

1/72 Scale
Kit No. 5029
Decals: Three versions – All Luftwaffe, 1945
Comments: Engraved panel lines, detailed cockpit, one-piece canopy, individually mounted propeller blades, photo-etch parts for radar array; decals by Cartograf

History

The Heinkel He 219 Uhu (in German, “Eagle Owl”) was a twin-engine night fighter originally planned solely as a long-range reconnaissance aircraft. It has the distinction of being the world’s first operational combat aircraft to be fitted with ejection seats, an area in which Ernst Heinkel AG was the undisputed pioneer. When Heinkel first submitted a design for what his engineers conceived as a multi-role aircraft in the Summer of 1940, the RLM had little interest.  France had just surrendered; England was unbeaten but on its knees, still reeling from the disaster at Dunkirk, and the general feeling in the weeks prior to the Battle of Britain was that it was only a matter of time before the British sued for peace. There was no need for a new long-range bomber/reconnaissance platform that could also serve as a dive-bomber/torpedo bomber, because the war would soon be over — so the thinking in the RLM went.

But by February 1941 conditions had changed — the Battle of Britain had ended in stalemate, and Hitler had “postponed” Operation Sea Lion and turned his attention East, with the planning for Operation Barbarossa well underway. The RLM decided there was a use for Heinkel’s multi-role aircraft after all. By March, Heinkel had secured RLM approval to build a prototype, which incorporated advanced features including a pressurized crew cabin, automatic pilot, remote-controlled dorsal and ventral barbettes, a tricycle undercarriage, and a true innovation — ejection seats.

But the RLM would change the specifications multiple times over the next year, first calling for a pure reconnaissance platform, then a bomber-destroyer akin to the Messerschmitt Bf 110, a high-altitude day fighter and night fighter, and finally narrowing the focus to a night fighter. Each change altered the specifications for the powerplant, maximum weight, and performance, triggering attendant delays in production. At one point, RLM micromanagement directed the tricycle undercarriage to be replaced with traditional landing gear.

By the Spring of 1942, Allied air raids targeting Heinkel’s facilities became a concern, with four concerted bombing attacks on Rostock, Germany between April 23rd and April 27th. Production was moved to Wien, Austria where work on the He 219 V1 slowly resumed. During this time the RLM had at last firmly decided on the need for a second generation night fighter to replace stop-gap aircraft pressed into the role, including the Dornier Do 17Z, Messerschmitt Bf 110, and Junkers Ju 88, but it was unclear which aircraft would fulfill the role. The plane initially slated for the task, Arado’s Ar 240, had proved a failure, being some 28 mph slower than specified and demonstrating performance and defensive armament inferior the Ju 88 it was intended to replace.

Despite the Ar 240’s demise, the He 219’s future was far from secure. Competition from competing designs remained, and combined with internal RLM politics formed something of a gauntlet that Heinkel’s night fighter had yet to run. By September 1942, the RLM had officially narrowed the choices for the second-generation night fighter to Messerschmitt’s Bf 110G, Dornier’s Do 217, and the He 219.  But unofficially, the Junkers Ju 188 was favored by Erhard Milch, head of RLM Aircraft Production, and the late submission of Focke Wulf’s new Ta 154, built largely of wood to address Germany’s shortage in strategic metals, helped fuel determined efforts to kill the He 219 as late as February 1943. Meanwhile, the prototype had successfully flown on November 15, 1942 at the Rostock facility. Powered by two Daimler Benz DB603 inverted V-12 liquid-cooled engines, it reached a speed of 382 mph.

Take-off and landing characteristics were exceptionally good with the now restored tricycle undercarriage. Full throttle runs revealed significant oscillation, due to propeller wash on the twin rudders. This was cured by enlarging the He 219’s vertical tail surfaces. Some instability was also cured by lengthening the fuselage by 3 ft. 5 in. Subsequent prototypes did not match the high performance of the first due to the use of subcontractors (the fuselages were built by Mielec, not Heinkel), and to make matters worse, in a January 1943 head-to-head fly off against a Ju 188, the He 219 put in a disappointing performance.

But on January 30, 1943 two different attacks by RAF Mosquitos underscored the need for a new plane to counter these particular high-speed raiders, partly because they were apparently capable of pinpoint bombing accuracy: the first was when three Mosquitos arrived unchallenged over Berlin at 11 a.m., dropping bombs that stopped a broadcast speech by Reichmarchall Hermann Goering. The second was when three more appeared at 4 p.m., laying on a bombing attack that prevented Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels from speaking.

Finally, on March 24, 1943 the RLM ordered the He 219 into production, directing construction of 748 aircraft: 120 He 219 A-0’s at Wien, and a further 628 He 219 A-1’s to be built at the main Rostock facility. The He 219’s combat debut came less than three months later, on the night of June 11-12 1943 when RAF Bomber Command attacked the city of Dusseldorf with 783 aircraft, a mix of four-engined Lancasters, Halifaxes, and Stirlings, even the twin-engined Wellington.

That night, an He 219 piloted by Major Werner Streib, commanding officer of the first Gruppe of Nachtjagdgeschwader 1, shot down five of the heavy bombers. Despite this impressive first action, Major Streib’s plane sustained damage and crashed upon landing back at its base at Venlo. The cockpit and front fuselage ripped free of the disintegrating airframe as it careened down the runway, and Major Streib and his radar operator, Unteroffizier Fischer, were lucky to walk away from the crash bruised and shaken, but otherwise unhurt.

Although the aircraft was a write-off, the He 219’s debut was so impressive that it prompted the RLM in August 1943 to refine the design for high-altitude operations. He 219’s began to harass RAF night raids with increasing frequency throughout the remainder of 1943 and into 1944. The British felts its sting, but it had its share of problems, including serviceability, increasing shortages of spare parts and fuel, icing of the armored windscreen, and the need for improved radar, since the Lichtenstein airborne intercept units they were initially fitted with were susceptible to jamming by the British “Window” — mass airborne drops of metal strips that could blind German radars.

The Heinkel He 219 nonetheless contributed to RAF Bomber Command’s high loss rates through the early months of 1944, to the point that in the run-up to the Normandy invasion, raids over Germany began to slack off during April, in part due to the need to hit high-priority targets in Northern France in preparation for D-Day.

The He 219 was the only German night fighter that had a chance of catching the nimble de Havilland Mosquito, and was arguably the most effective Axis night fighter of the war. For this reason He 219’s were increasingly dispatched to go after Mosquito night raiders. On the British side, RAF bomber losses grew to the point that Fighter Command sent the thimble-nosed Mosquito NF. Mk. XIX — a specially developed night fighter version — on night missions over Germany, with the specific assignment of hunting enemy night fighters such as the He 219. Had Heinkel’s night fighter not been forced to run the triple gauntlet of competing designs, RLM indecision, and internal ministry politics, it might have entered service sooner and posed an even more lethal threat to Allied bombers.

 

The Kit

Dragon’s He 219 B-1 is injection molded in grey plastic and consists of 117 parts, including 9 clear parts for the greenhouse canopy, gunsight, and wing lights. The cockpit is highly detailed with a photo-etch instrument panel, a two-piece control yoke, separate seat backs, and a console for the radar operator containing abundant raised detail. The cockpit “floor” is a cross between a floor and a tub, and features side panel instrumentation, also with raised detail.

The landing gear are quite detailed, with the main gear consisting of 10 parts each, including the bulkheads fitting into the engine nacelles. There are three-part cylindrical flame dampening exhausts, two on each side of both nacelles, along with individually mounted propeller blades and spinners for each airscrew. One thing that may pose a challenge is that the outer third of each wing is a separate, single piece which will fit into a slot in the inboard wing sections — some skill in seam-hiding may be necessary at this stage, but careful use of Tamiya cement or another adhesive with capillary action that can meld the plastic together will go a long way toward minimizing any gaps.

For the radar array, there are four plastic arms protruding from the 2, 4, 8 and 10 o’clock positions on the nose, and once these are cemented on and set, the photo-etch parts for the antennae will be attached using cyanoacrylate glue. An item of note is that four diminutive plastic caps are to be cemented to the nose of the central prong of each of the four PE parts — and they are so tiny it will probably be best to this before attaching the PE parts to the plastic arms of the radar array. For some reason there are two canopies, but they are not of identical dimensions, so only one can be used with this kit.

Markings

The kit decals are by Cartograf, crisp and clear and perfectly in register with realistic color. The first version is a machine of 1/NJG3 operating in Germany in 1945. It is painted in overall Flat Black and includes an image of an owl (in light blue) sitting atop a yellow crescent moon, which adorns both sides of the nose below the pilot’s section of the canopy. It bears the code “AC” and has a curious white diamond on the vertical tails which should probably be a swastika — modelers can look to aftermarket sources if they are sticklers about accuracy on this point.

The second set of markings is for a machine of 3/NJG3, painted in a mottle scheme of Flat Black over Light Grey/Hellgrau with Flat Black undersurfaces and vertical tails, except for the leading edge panel on each vertical tail. It carries the code “CN” and the vertical tails bear a number “31080” but no swastika or other marking of any kind.

The third set of markings is for a machine of 1/NJG3, also painted in a mottle scheme of Flat Black over Light Grey/Hellgrau with Flat Black undersurfaces and vertical tails, except for the leading edge panel on each vertical tail, which are otherwise plain, bearing neither numbers nor other markings. It carries the code “CY”

Conclusion

This kit has an impressive level of detail for the scale, presenting a high quality replica of a very successful late-war night fighter. Highly recommended.

References

Profile Publications No. 219, Heinkel He 219, Copyright 1970 Profile Publications Limited, Coburg House, Berkshire (UK).