Hasegawa

1/72 Limited Release Heinkel He111Z 'Zwilling'

Product # 00995 Hasegawa from Hobby Link Japan

Product Article by Dave Johnson on June 28 2010

 

The Heinkel He111Z ‘Zwilling’ (German for twin), was developed as a super heavy military tow aircraft for the Messerschmitt Me 321 “Gigant” which was capable of carrying 20 tons of Cargo or 200 fully equipped combat troops. Production of the Me 321 was hampered due to the shortage of suitable tow aircraft. Test were carried out that saw three to four Messerschmitt Bf110 joined together to make one giant aircraft, Unfortunately this design was ultimately scrapped due the problems to synchronize the engines on each of the Bf110’s, which caused many accidents. Ernst Heinkel proposed a design to the Luftwaffe, which would join two of his He111H-6 bombers together. At least 12 He111Z’s were produced for towing duties. There were plans for a further two variants, long range bomber and long range reconnaissance design, these never saw actual production.

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The jammed packed box with 288 parts on 36 medium gray and clear sprues are packed into Hasegawa’s normal style top loader box, with beautiful box art done by one of the worlds best aviation artists, Koike Shigeo from Japan.  http://www.hlj.com/product/HSG00995

The kit contains newly tooled parts for the center wing and engines. Also included in the box are drop tanks, early and late style cockpit glazing and 3 types of exhaust pipes. Some of these items are not required, but surely be nice additions to anyone’s spares box.

The kits detail is crisp and nicely done for a 72nd scaled kit. The landing gear parts and areas are nicely represented. The only down side to the kits details are the panel lines are represented very deep for this scale, but the newly tooled center wing sections panel lines are a lot fine and crisper. Control surfaces are molded into place, but with careful surgery could be moved into different positions The transparent parts are crystal clear and will require a tedious task of masking before painting the parts. 

 

The dry fit of the parts shows an excellent fit and hopefully the modeler will not require any filler during the build process. There are no signs of sink marks or flash present on any of the sprues. There is couple of locations where injection pin marks are close to part details but with a careful clean up these will be easily taken care of.

Two schemes are included for options for markings "DG+DZ" in winter distemper camouflage and "TH+ZI" in summer camouflage. The decal sheet print registry is excellent, with a crisp white on the codes and national markings. The yellow for the RLM 04 matches up to RLM colour chips. Some of the carrier film is oversized and will require a small amount of trimming before applying them.

  

 

This kit should provide an easy build for the average modeler. Overall general shape of the kit is excellent. This kit is under limited issue, so grab one if you would like to add one of the Luftwaffe oddities to your collection. The inclusion of an Italeri or Testers 1/72 Messerschmitt Me321 “Gigant” would result in an impressive pair and addition to anyone’s display cabinet.

I would like to thank the team at HobbyLink Japan (www.hlj.com) for supplying this review sample.

Dave Johnson

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Photos and text © by Dave Johnson