HISTORY

With the failure of Operation Overlord to open a western front and the allies stuck in the Manche pocket with no outlook of breaking out in the near future Stalin sued for peace in January 1945 after several decisive German victories in the East which left the Soviet forces in disarray. The newly formed German military junta, formed by the generals who finally overthrew Hitler in the early stages of Overlord, gladly accepted this offer as it freed up resources that could be better used in destroying the allied beachhead in France.

Knowing that Hitler’s reliance on new superweapons was only tapping already dwindling German resources the generals council decided to concentrate efforts into building already proven weapons that could be put into the field immediately without any trail periods. Fw-190’s, Me-109’s, Panthers and Panzer IV’s were the order of the day and gone were the Tigers and new jets, although the Me-262 was still being produced in small quantities, which were too unreliable and technically complex for the state and situation of the German war machine.

The last of Hitler’ wonder weapons to make it to operational service was the Ar. E555 long range jet bomber. This aircraft was to touted to be the weapon that would bring the war to America but only three missions were ever flown to this end. All ended in disaster with those aircraft that made it to the US being shot down by US interceptors and air defenses. This left 62 of the original 110 aircraft built still operational but with no mission available, that is until Hitler was deposed.

With the allies dedicating the majority of their resources to rebuilding a task force strong enough to break the now doubly formidable defenses and preparedness of ‘Fortress Europe’ to relieve the armies pinned in the Manche pocket Germany once again looked south. Sicily was occupied by the Americans and British under General Patton but they were effectively stalled with no way to try again to establish a beachhead in Italy with all such resources being diverted to England, so it was decided to once again establish an Axis presence in Africa.

With little opposition Libya was once again in Axis hands and offered an opportunity for the Arado jets that was never in their design plans. Twenty four Arados of KG 54 were sent to Libya to start up operations against shipping and disrupting operations of the Suez Canal. This required low level attacks through heavily defended airspace, which surprisingly the E555’s were well suited for. The aircraft were highly maneuverable for their size and quite robust, being able to absorb heavy damage and still return to base. There was one Achilles heel on this aircraft and that was the engine pod that held all six engines. As could be imagined if one engine was damaged and suffered a catastrophic failure it could easily destroy the engine next to it and so on in a domino effect. However, due to it’s position on the top of the aircraft it was sheltered from most ground fire so it was primarily other aircraft that needed to be worried about.

In the end the Arados were withdrawn only because of parts shortages as they had performed their assigned role admirably, rising like a Phoenix from the disaster that was their designed purpose.

THE KIT

When Revell Germany released this kit a couple years ago I had to buy it if not for it’s significance for it’s ‘coolness’ factor, it is definitely one eye catching aircraft! While the box only states that it is an Ar. E555 it’s actually closest to the final Ar. E555V8 prototype with the smaller tail fins and forward firing wingroot canon. The A1 had slightly larger fins with no forward firing armament and the A2, the last variant, had the guns reinstalled and upgraded engines. Since the differences in the tail fins is minor there is no problem in building any of these variants.

1. Assembly

I built the kit straight from the box and decided to keep the Bombay closed for no other reason that I felt like it. I wouldn’t expect there to be any problems building the Bombay open, as the assembly is very straightforward.

The kit went together with almost no problems and the few I had were mostly minor or my own fault. One problem I had with assembly was that a small bulkhead in the very front of the upper fuselage half, above the pilot and copilots seats, had to be removed or it would hit the tops of the seats. I removed this bulkhead only because my seats were securely glued in place. If the seats were added after the fuselage halves had been put together this problem could have been avoided although the seat would have been slightly out of place. A second minor problem was that my canopy didn’t fit width wise to the fuselage, it was too narrow. To fix this I just sanded both sides of the fuselage around the canopy edges until the canopy fit it properly. Also, the front landing gear are made so that you have to install them in the early stages of assembly so I cut off one of the side locating pins so that I could install it after the model was assembled and painted. The landing gear in general have quite secure mounting points so removing this pin will not weaken the front gear any significant amount.

Now for my goof up. I didn’t follow the instructions which is not uncommon but I broke my #1 modelling rule, DRYFIT EVERYTHING AT LEAST THREE TIMES! The engine pod is made of two halves and six intakes and six exhausts. I thought I was being smart by attaching the two halves first so that I could clean up and seams easily but I forgot to dryfit the intakes and exhausts. Well the exhausts go on fine but the intakes HAVE to be put on BEFORE you attach the two middle halves together. Therefore I had to pry apart the two halves, resulting in one large laceration on my finger! I paid my dues I guess.

The final problem I had is a common one with tail sitters; I didn’t put enough weight in the nose. The instructions call for 32g so I doubled that and even put weight under the engineer/gunners seat and it still doesn’t sit on its front gear at all times. Oddly enough it does sit on its front gear in my display case, maybe it’s tilted forward? I attempted to fix this by drilling holes behind the landing lights and dropping CA covered beads of lead into the leading edge but the weight was too far back to do be effective. However, I do have plans to use this kit in a diorama so it should not be a problem then as I can glue the nose down.

2. Painting And Markings

When KG 54 arrived in Africa the aircraft were still painted in the ‘Atlantic Scheme’ of overall RLM 76 with RLM 75 splotches. Of course this scheme was ill suited for Africa and the aircrews and ‘Black Men’ went to work immediately repainting the aircraft to better suit their new environment. With a severe lack of basic supplies from Europe the crews made do with what was on hand so while many have referenced the colours as being RLM standard it was highly unlikely they really were.

Realizing that the allies still maintained air superiority in Africa, the commander of KG 54 thought it best to camouflage his aircraft primarily to hide them when on the ground. It was almost a certainty that they would attract great interest once their presence was known and the Arados were most vulnerable on the ground. To this end the individual crews were given great license as to how they painted their aircraft resulting in some spectacular and very unorthodox paint schemes. By far the most well known of these is Maj. Otto Steins Ar. E555/A2, 5J*E which is one of the aircraft that inspired the name Drachengeschwader to be applied, unofficially, to KG 54. The three colour scheme of light green overall with dark green and sand lines was applied over the existing ‘Atlantic Scheme’ which can be seen under and on the engine pod as well as the tail fins, the bottom of the aircraft was left RLM 76. The black undersurface was added later when the group was called on more and more to perform night intruder operations. There is only one rather grainy picture of any of these aircraft with the black undersurfaces and it is of an aircraft in the distance but it looked to me that the leading edges may have had the wave pattern that I have applied to my model.

Once final assembly was done and I had masked and painted the interior colour on the canopies I airbrushed a coat of Mr. Surfacer thinned with denatured alcohol on the model. Once this was dry I buffed it out with some 0000 steel wool to remove and imperfections and rough spots. Using Model Master enamels throughout I started by painting RLM 76 around the engine pod location as well as the tail fins and engine pod itself. I then applied the RLM 75 mottles to the tail fins and engine pod as well as larger blotches to the upper fuselage. Once this was dry I applied overall RLM 83 to the uppersurfaces to which I had added some Japan dryer because I knew I would be handling the model a lot while painting the next two colours and I didn’t want to have to wait for a week or more to start this step. The next day I applied the RLM 80 and 79 lines, the RLM 80 went on perfect but I had quite the problem with the RLM 79. For some reason, no matter what I tried, the RLM 79 had severe overspray problems and I could not get a nice clean line. What I ended up doing was touching up the edges of the RLM 79 lines with RLM 80 and 83 which worked out fine although it was a lot of extra work. After a week I masked off the leading and trailing edges as well as the gear bays, which I had earlier painted RLM 66 along with the cockpit, to paint the undersurfaces with Aircraft Interior Black. Once the paint had dried for a week or so I again rubbed down the surface with steel wool and touched up any spots where I may have broken through the paint.

I then applied two coats of Future Floor Polish by hand and applied the decals after letting the Future cure for another week. Extradecal supplied the swastikas, the KG 54 badge and E were from Superscale sheet 72-709(He-111’s) and the rest of the decals are from the kit. All went down without a problem and all reacted well to Microset and Sol and were sealed in another coat of Future. Once this last coat of Future had cured for a few days I then applied a medium gray wash using Heavenly Hues acrylic wash. Immediately after I was done with the wash I applied a satin finish using Future and Tamiya X-21 which I applied with an airbrush.

3. Final Assembly

Weathering was done with a combination of drybrushed Testors Steel and a mixture of black, gray and brown pastels. When this was completed all the external details were added, landing gear and doors, top turret and rear gun unit, wingroot guns, landing lights, pitot tube, antenna and engine pod. All went on without any problems and the guns can be built to rotate and elevate but I decided to glue them in place as the fit was loose and they did not hold their positions.

One final note, I painted the rear gun housing natural metal which is shown well in the famous picture of Stein and his ground crew inspecting damage to his aircraft. The antenna was painted RLM 02 for no other reason than I didn’t know what else to paint it. What I do know is that it was a much lighter colour than RLM 83 and darker than RLM 76 as can be seen in the photograph, on page 76 of the Schuffer book showing Steins engineer/gunner, Hptm. Bressel, sitting on the upper turret.

CONCLUSION

I have to say that this is an excellent kit suitable for modellers of any skill level. The excellent fit and few parts make it an excellent choice for a beginner and the model lends itself well to adding details that many advanced modellers love to do. I built mine strictly out of the box, other than the markings, only because I may enter it in a contest in this category but I could hardly resist superdetailing it. According to drawings in the Schuffer book the model specs out almost exactly to the drawings of the V8 prototype and as mentioned the tail differences are very minor and should not be worried about for A1’s and A2’s.

REFERENCES

• Arado Ar. E555 – Manfred Kohl, Shuffer Publications
• Drachen! – Horst Gehrke, Flying Machine Press
• Return To Africa – James Spalding, Unreal Publications
• What The Hey? Oddball Aircraft of WWII, 1939 – 49 – Bill Shatner, Yahoo Books