Revell He 219 weapons

[thierry laurent]

Frankly, this is a lovely kit BUT looking at the Revell instruction sheets puzzles me... To be honest, I hate them! I'm wondering if they are not trying to win the competition of the most crammed instruction pages!?! Moreover, this is very odd when you see that the booklet has at least two empty pages at the end... :-(( Identifying which optional part belongs to which plane is not really user-friendly.

 

To come back to the post topic, there is no information about which plane should have which weapon. They state that all of them had only two guns in the belly gunpack. BTW, this does not comply with the info of the schemes pages. Ok but what about the Schräge Musik ones? I'm not fully blaming Revell as in spite of the numerous He 219 book I've, it is not easy to find good pictures of production planes made after the A-0. Nonetheless, this does not ease the modeller's job.

 

Up to now, I've concluded that 310189 did not have the vertical guns. This plane was evaluated by the RAF after the war and consequently, there are more pictures of her. Last but not least, a wartime front picture of the plane (hopefully correctly identified...) shows the four guns in the gunpack!?! And a post-war one shows that the external ones were there (no way to say for the internal ones as the only good picture I know has a propeller blade hiding the gun muzzle location).

 

Accordingly, I'm wondering about the other schemes as well...

[DamonW]

You have posted an excellent question and I will try and answer it as best I can, based on what I have found while researching the same question. Simply put, the standard factory weapons arrangement for A-2 and A-7 aircraft would be two wingroot MG151's, two MG151's in the forward ventral gun pod (the outer two blast tubes in the front would be open) and two MK108's in the fuselage/upwards firing arrangement. That would be your safest arrangement to base your build on. With that said, what modifications in weapons arrangements were made by crews in the field would be up to you, based on photos of the particular aircraft you are building. The ventral gun pods were still built to accept the two rear guns and could be installed later. The upwards firing cannons could also be removed and the muzzle ports on the upper fuselage taped/faired over. I would be surprised if any planes had more than six guns, in any arrangement, based on wieght considerations and what I have found.

I believe the photo that shows the four blast tubes open is mislabeled and not WNr. 310189. I have a found a couple of photos showing this plane only had the two outer tubes open. It would have had the upwards firing cannons installed at the factory, but if they were removed and the ports taped/faired over I can't tell from the photos I have seen.

I hope this helps and I can try and post or email you photos if you want.

Damon

[thierry laurent]

Thanks. Indeed, having a look at the pics you found would be a good idea. If you find them in books, you may also give me the reference if this is easier for you.

[DamonW]

If I posted the link properly, this website has a good selection of photos of the He 219's captured at Grove. Just download the file. Some are grouped together by WNr. which is helpful.

http://www.gyges.dk/night_fighters_odds_and_ends.htm

[jacksdad64]

Excellent link Damon.

That will be very usefull when I build mine.

 

Steve

[thierry laurent]

Excellent input! Thanks a lot.