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Achtung 109 Experten


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I've not built a 109 for many many years, but recently bought a couple of Hasegawa G-10s to add to my increasing Czech collection. Anyway, in my dim 'n' distant youth I built a lot in 1/72, and had a few books, notably Nowarra's "Story of a Famous Fighter" (Harleyford). All these references showed the G-10 as having the same sort of bulges over the cannon as the G-6 and others. Now I see that the Hasegawa G-10s have much larger bulges that do not appear so prominent as the contours change more gradually. This is backed up by references I have seen recently. The question is: when did all this new research come to light?

As a final supplementary, I think the cockpit should be very dark grey: is this correct?

TIA

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When did the new research about the "refined cowl" come to light? Well, I recall a 109K drawing (George Hopp?) that was the first to get it right. That must have been in the 70s, relying on memory. But I'd have thought the G-10s were known to have had bulges before then - anyone with a publishing date for Hitchcock's Oh Nine Gallery? Beaman's Last of the Eagles was another classic reference - I got mine in the 80s, IIRC, but that was a bit late and I was lucky to get it.

I can recall a lot of G-10 photos were still being captioned as G-2s in the 70s, so I guess that makes then the cross-over time. The Heller K came out in the mid 70s with a "G-6" cowl (and shrunken fin) to screams of outrage, so much so that they retooled it in the very late 70s. Now if I could only remember the year my wife and I went to Paris....I saw a reference in a French magazine when out there and the holiday was rapidly altered to a search for model shops! Eventually, on my last afternoon, Sirroco had one. "I can get some more from Hellair tomorrow"

However, the exact shapes of the multiple variants of the refined cowl were not captured until around 2000, thanks to a French researcher. Another book on the long list of ones I really should buy/have bought.

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Gents,

Many thanks. May even start them tonight - I'm trying to decide between two Czech machines (AF and Police) or one Czech and one Luftwaffe; if I go for the latter, shall I do the Czech one as Police or Air Force??? Decisions Decisions!

Thanks again

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I have no idea when the first references for the revised cowl appeared, but I do remember building a Hawk kit of a 109G which had one piece wings and a pilot molded into the cockpit as a 'K' in the late 60s ('68?) using copious amounts of filler to revise the cowl shape and carving out the landing gear bays. There had to be a drawing or something at the time. It may have been a photo of what was captioned as a 'K' in Green's Famous Fighters of WWII or the pocket sized guides he published of fighters for all nations in WWII.

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I was looking through Nowarra's book again last night, and on a page 174 there's a photo, captioned as aG-10/U4 that clearly shows the larger, more subtle bulges, that we now know. On the other hand, the GA drawing of a G-10 on P142 illustrates G-6-type cannon bulges.

Seems the evidence was there, but we all missed it.

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It could be because the "smooth" cowling was only introduced very very late in the 109 production. Some G10s had normal bulges. Only the later G10s had smooth ones. K4s had smooth cowlings as standard. I don't think any G6s had them.

As for the books mis-naming planes: it's very hard to just eyeball a plane and say "Oh, that's a G10" as opposed to saying "Oh, that's a G6/AS" -- unless the photo has some sort of damning evidence pointing one way or the other, it's very hard to tell. So it's possible that a G10 (from some angles) would look like a G2 with the large bulges. That's a pretty big snafu, really, but it *could* happen.

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It could be because the "smooth" cowling was only introduced very very late in the 109 production. Some G10s had normal bulges. Only the later G10s had smooth ones. K4s had smooth cowlings as standard. I don't think any G6s had them.

The 'smooth' cowl as you called it, or 'refined' cowl as it is also called was because the standard cowl with its gun breech bulges introduced with the G-5/G-6 would not fit if the DB605D (or DB605A/S) engine was used. The enlarged compressor required a change in the engine mounts which in turn led to the revised cowl which smoothed out the bulges. This also means that the refined cowl was in use prior to the G-10, specifically the G-6/AS and G-14/AS also had the 'refined cowl.

AFAIK, all G-10s also had the refined cowl. The G-10 was supposed to be fitted with the DB605D which required the revised cowl but early production G-10s got the DB605A/S since DB605D production lagged behind demand. In any case, since the A/S engine also required a refined cowl, the engine choice is moot regarding at least the upper cowl lines (it does change the lower cowl around the oil cooler).

As late as William Green's Warplanes of the Third Reich, this revised cowl was still being missed, several captions are incorrectly claiming G-10 on what are are actually normal (G-6 type) bulged cowls. Even the three view drawings of the K shows G-6 type bulges. Although once again there is a photo of a K that actually shows the refined cowl if you know to look for it.

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