Trumpeter

1/144 - Me-262A-1a and Me-262A-2a

Kit Number: 02319 (1a) and 01318 (2a)

Reviewed by  Jim Pearsall, IPMS# 2209

MSRP: $8.95 each Imported by Stevens International: www.stevenshobby.com The Me-262 was the first operational jet fighter. The single seat Me-262A is kitted here with two variants, the A-1a, which had 4 x 30 mm cannon. The A-2a was the bomber version, with two of the 30mm cannons removed and bomb racks added. When he discovered the new Trumpeter Me-262s, a friend and fellow 1/144 modeler made me an offer. I'd build one of each of these kits for him, and I could do the review. Additionally, he gave me one of each of these for my building pleasure. Or the stash, more likely. The kits: The two kits are almost identical, except the 1a comes with drop tanks, and the 2a has bombs and only 2 x 30 mm cannon in the nose. There are also different decal sheets for the two variant. There is a cockpit area which is put inside the fuselage bottom, then the top is glued on. The engines consist of 4 parts for each of the nacelles. For 1/144 this is very detailed.

WARNING: Trumpeter says nothing about weighting the nose. And both of my 262s sat on the nose wheel just fine until I put on the canopy. So add weight somewhere in the nose section before you put the top of the fuselage on. If you're using the closed option for the gun bays, this would be a good spot to add some chunks of lead, scrap iron, modeling clay, or whatever. Generally fit is pretty good. The rear of the fuselage has a gap, and the engines don't want to exactly line up with the wings, but it doesn't take much putty to fix anything in this scale, especially a fighter. The wings fit quite nicely to the fuselage, with no real gaps, and I didn't have to fool with the fit at all. The bombs fit the bomb racks so tightly I had to use a file to get them assembled. I built both pretty much simultaneously, except the customer wanted a vac-form canopy on the fighter version. OK. But I don't really like the way the home-made vac canopy fits, and the club member who made the vac copies cracked the master canopy. The customer also wanted the fighter done as Galland's "white 3" of JV-44, as depicted in Nicolas Trudgian's painting "In Defense of the Reich", which he found in Aviation Art Magazine, Volume 1, 1993 (Challenge Publications, Canoga Park, CA). He also wanted the gun bay open on the bomber, closed on the fighter. Maybe I'd have been better off buying my own kits? After painting and gloss coat with Future, I used the kit decals on the bomber version. Everything went well except the split Swastikas. The first one went pretty well, but the second was a problem. The film on the second half kept pushing the first half away as I tried to position them. I finally wound up lifting the second half completely off the tail and putting it down with some overlap, then nudging it into the right place. An opti-visor is mandatory for this kind of fine work. The fighter had its own set of marking problems. The red/blue band is from the Eduard Me-262, and it's too short to completely go around the Trumpeter kit. Fortunately I had some Testor's paint in the little square bottles that matched pretty well. The Swastikas were also from the Eduard kit, and they were one-piece, and no trouble at all. Some day I'll ponder why a Czech company does one-piece Swastikas and a Chinese company doesn't. The serial numbers and white 3 were from another provider, and all 4 of these decals cracked or split while I tried to get them on the plane. I used a mixture of Eduard and Trumpeter decals for the wing and fuselage crosses. I cut a small piece of white decal to make the white stripe on the fuselage bands. The Trumpeter canopy fits very nicely. I had trouble getting the vac canopy to fit. My recommendation is to stay with the kit supplied part. Landing gear on both aircraft is OK. There's no real detail in the gear wells, but a couple of years ago 1/144 fighters came without wheel wells at all, so it's good. The Lagniappe Both of these kits come with a really cute extra. You get a Kettenkrad and tow bar. The Kettenkrad is really simple consisting of the handle bar and front wheel as one part, and the rest of the vehicle as a second part. Some smart aleck suggested individual track links. Yeah, right. But the assembled Kettenkrad is a useful addition to the aircraft. Overall Evaluation: Highly recommended. I didn't compare them with outline drawings, but they certainly look far better than the 1/72 262s I built back in the 60s. The kits are not expensive, and they have good fit. The decals are very good, and I have some one-piece Swastikas in my "left over decal" box. The landing gear doors are too thick, but if you do them to scale, you'd have to use photoetch. I can live with the doors as they are, thanks.