Thursday 28 December 2017

French post-war Me 163 Komet




Above;

This is Kevin Callahan's fine Academy 72nd scale Me 163 with post-war French registration, a representation of an example seen post-war at French AF flight test centre Bretigny (Centre d'essais en vol) where according to the 'Flugzeug Profile' text below it was flown as a glider. It is believed that this machine was WNr. 10061 'yellow 13', previously allocated British AIRMIN No. '203' and which was handed over to the French during March 1946 ..



via Kevin Callahan


" ....One day I was exercising my Google Fu concerning Me-163 Komets. The main thing I was looking for was photos of the captured RAF example that was repainted in British markings. What I actually ran across was a paint job that I had never seen on a Komet before. It was on a Rocketeer sheet, but I soon found out that the sheet was long out of print. ....

....Komets are simple kits. I used the Academy version which I had in the stash. The one trouble I had was with the Master turned brass pitot and gun barrel set. Since this was an unarmed glider, I didn’t use the gun barrels and the pitot proved to be close enough to scale and is admirably thin. Me-163s are one of the few aircraft that I have done a long series of ...... The attraction is that there are nice models – specifically Academy – of the main variants, and numerous kits – in both plastic and resin – of many of the lesser known variants. I supposed you could consider much of the Lippisch output to be in the Komet bloodline, since many of them strongly resemble the Me-163s. But even the major 163 subvariants (DFS 194, A, B, S, C, P-20 jet, I-270, 263, J8M1) are pretty well covered. Painting was easy, with only two colors (red and Alclad White Aluminum) required on the fuselage/wings. The decals also performed as expected. The result is a fairly unique model in any lineup of Me-163s..."

Kevin's 72nd scale blog is here