Airfix 1/24 Bf 109E-7 Trop
By Andrea Ferrari
My venerable Airfix 1:24 Messerschmitt Bf 109E-4 converted to represent a Messerschmitt Bf 109E-7 Trop of 3./JG27 at Ain-el-Gazala, Libya, in 1941. A truly classic kit dating back to 1972, the Airfix Emil still builds reasonably well and is quite representative of this legendary fighter but suffers from empty, featureless landing gear wells, fixed molded-in flaps and several oversimplified details. Yet, it currently is the only game in town in this large scale, and building one is always a nostalgic pleasure.
The conversion was a very simple one and basically consisted in scratchbuilding a tropical filter, adding a 300 lt belly tank with its ETC 250 rack (swindled from a Trumpeter kit) and reshaping the Airfix original “continental” spinner to the capped version most commonly seen on the JG27 Emils serving in Africa. Gunze Sangyo acrylics were used for the RLM 78, 79 and 80 camouflage, with the belly tank in RLM 65 for a bit of variety.
© Andrea Ferrari 2019
This article was published on Saturday, August 17 2019; Last modified on Saturday, August 17 2019