Heinkel He111 H-6 Plastic Model aircraft Kit

A welcome release from Revell. This plane was feared by thousands of civilians from Guernica to Gloucester and Warsaw to Wolverhampton. Enough poetry, here’s a review of this Luftwaffe mainstay.

The plane was developed as part of a sneaky way of getting around the draconian restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles on German military air capability. Like many aircraft of the early 1930s in Germany The HE 111 was thinly disguised as a civilian airliner- and the fastest civilian airliner in the world at that. The first version was called the “Blitz” and only had a single engine. This aircraft actually flew at 230 mph and broke some speed records very quickly. The plane was a competitor to the Douglas DC2 the precurser of the famous Dakota another crucial aircraft in aviation history.

The HE111 replaced the Blitz and because it had 2 engines was referred to by many as the Dopple Blitz (the double). A later version, the He 111 A-1 actually won the title of world’s fastest airliner in the world in 1936 with a speed of 250 mph +.

The He111 initially had competition as a military bomber in the form of the JU86 which looked like it would be the type chosen. However, due to performance shortcomings and the greater number of 111s by then produced, the Heinkel 111 became Germanys main medium bomber and Junkers went back to the drawing board to start on the Junkers 88.

The HE 111 D variant was planned to be the first Luftwaffe version but actually proved to have many shortcomings so those got sold to the Chinese ( there were a few military sales to the Chinese in the 30s including the “Gustav” German helmet types).

The HE 111 E Was the variant that saw actual combat service being introduced into the Condor legion to serve in the Spanish civil war where it got a good service reputation though not so much with the poor people of Guernica who were its victims.

There were other versions of the 111 but the Revell scale model kit represents the H version which saw the most service in World war two. It was the main bomber in the Blitzkriegs on Poland and the Low Countries and hundreds bombed British airfields, factories and cities in and after the Battle of Britain. In the movie of that name (Guy Hamilton 1969) you get to see great detail on the way the planes flew and how they behaved under fire (even down to control wires snapping).

Although the Heinkel 111 served until 1944 ,it became more of a transport and medivac aircraft after 1943 as the Luftwaffe became less and less able to sustain bombing operations and Blitzkriegs.

A replacement for the HE111 was designed called the HE177 but it proved to be full of faults so the HE 111 survived long after it became obsolete in reality. Many of the Axis allies also operated the aircraft during the war so it was a good earner for the Nazis

The last serving HE 111s served in Franco’s Spain until 1958 presumably ones he inherited from the Condor legion.

The model itself will be no pushover being a large model with many moving parts.Having said this it might be a good one to try once you have three or four easier ones under your belt. You get 2 decal sets- both, I believe, are Luftwaffe ones.