The Heinkel He51 was one of the last biplane fighters and one of the first Luftwaffe fighters. In the early years of the Luftwaffe, the He51 also had the distinction of being one of the most colourful planes in the air arm, with brightly coloured noses adorning different squadrons.

In 1/48 scale the only choice for an injection moulded He51 is the Classic Airframes kit.  This is definitely not a kit to start this hobby with, but if you’ve built a few short run kits or resin kits you should have no problems with it.  Be prepared for a fair amount of work and filler along the way.

The plastic in the kit had a rough texture to it, which I smoothed down with some fine steel wool.  The interior went together well with a mix of brass, plastic and resin parts to be fitted in place. Dry fitting and care is required, as there are no locating pegs.  The cockpit was painted overall RLM 02 and detail was picked out with other colours although virtually none of this can be seen once the fuselage halves are together due to the small cockpit opening.

The fuselage on my kit had a slight warp along the length of one half but was fine when glued and clamped.  The top of the cowling was a little trickier to get right but thankfully the plastic is so thick that I was able to re-profile it easily after the glue had set.  The front end was improved slightly by opening out the two oval engine ventilation holes.

The bottom wing and undercarriage legs were attached with no real problems but careful alignment is key to the sit/character of the finished article.  The spatted wheels in this kit are a bit of a disappointment.  Each wheel/spat is assembled in two halves that don't match very well.  I fell into the trap of gluing them together and then had to spend a whole evening sanding each wheel/spat so that they matched.  You have been warned.  One final criticism of this area is that the tyre tread on the wheels is more akin to something found on a Massey-Ferguson tractor than a 1930's bi-plane.

Tailplane attachment was straightforward and at this stage it was time to paint the majority of the model.  I decided to use an option from Aeromaster sheet 48-457 so the first job was to spray the upper and front fuselage in a mid blue colour matched to that of the Geschswader badge.  This was masked in the characteristic He51 scallop pattern then the rest of the aircraft was given a couple of coats of RLM 02.  Now to the most difficult part of this kit, the struts and top wing.

The struts took a lot of cleaning up and even then didn't fit well.  Attaching the struts and top wing is one of those tasks where you wished you had two pair of hands.  In the end I put on the cabane struts first and let the glue set overnight.  Then I used a large piece of blu-tack on the top of the fuselage to hold the top wing whilst I carefully positioned the main struts.  All was aligned by eye as the glue was setting.

A coat of gloss varnish and it was time for the decals.  These as you would expect from Aeromaster were great with the large Balkenkreuze, radio codes and red tailband swastika really setting off the plain grey finish.  Rigging was added from fishing line and stretched sprue.  The final job before a coat of flat varnish was to add the propeller and the metal finish drop tank.  Weathering was kept to a minimum as the photos I had showed that the pre-war He51s were typically kept very clean.

Building this kit has helped fill in the early years of my Luftwaffe collection and I'm sure that I'll do the other option on the Aeromaster sheet but for the moment I need a break from the struts and rigging.  Thankfully, the Hasegawa Hs129 came out shortly after completing the He51 and that is now progressing nicely on my workbench.
 

Even though the kit took some work to get things just right, I can heartily recommend this as it builds into an excellent example from the birth of the Luftwaffe.

Morgan Gilbert.
Gloucester IPMS.