Planet Model's 1/72 He 162C By Brent Theobald

History

Progressive development of the basic He-162 design, whose final detailed drawings were completed in October 19944, lead to a large number of various prototypes. He-162C single-seat fighter had one of the most progressive designs with wings swept back 38 degrees at the leading edge and a "V" tail.

The He-162C was envisaged as a target defense interceptor. Unfortunately (fortunately?) it was never completed. Only a partially assembled prototype was found at Schwechat by the Allies at the end of the war. It's powerplant was to be a Heinkel-Hirth 001 A turbojet. The He-162C was estimated to have a top speed of 565 mph at 19,685 ft (910 km/h at 6,000 m) with this engine.

The Kit

The model comes packed in the familiar black and white Planet box we have become accustomed to. The kit is packed in their usual method as well: resin bits individually sealed in a plastic bag along with metal parts, vacuform canopy and decals. Everything arrived in one piece and looks good.

The instructions are very basic. Consisting only of two exploded drawings and a three-view painting guide. This is not a bad thing because this is such a simple model. There is plenty of information in the instructions to build this model.

After opening the box you will find five resin plugs which contain a total of 12 parts. There is no evidence of pinholes anywhere and the surface is smooth and glossy. One improvement in this kit over other resin kits I have seen is the uniform width and depth of the recessed panel lines. Casting plugs are all well thought out and are very thin. This means they won't be too hard to remove and clean up. These parts are all well cast. Some areas are so thin that the resin becomes translucent. The cockpit area is especially nice. I hope all the detail isn't covered up once the model is assembled. My only complaint with the resin parts is the wheel wells have no detail at all. The modeler will have to add his own detail or just decide not to look at the bottom of this model. The parts breakdown is well thought out too. Everything looks like it will line up very nicely with very little effort (for a resin kit).

There are four white metal parts included. The three landing gear struts are obviously made from this material in order to support the weight of the model. It is less clear why the main gear wheel is white metal. No matter, it won't need any clean up since there is not a casting plug. The white metal parts all look great. The detail is nice and light, not heavy or overdone. They should look great under a coat of paint.

I guess they are cutting costs over there at Planet Models because they include only one vacuform canopy with this kit. My copy looks really good. The plastic does not have any ripples or bubbles deforming its shape. The one canopy looks very good.

Planet supplies us with a decal sheet that looks like it has markings for four fictitious aircraft. After looking at it I noticed it has four different part numbers on it: PLT 007, 008, 009 and 010. Since this is kit number 10 I have to assume the other three numbers are for the other He-162 kits that Planet offers. Anyhow, the decals are printed by Propagteam. They look to be in register with good color. I would bet they are going to be very fragile so care will needed when applying these. (I was given a good tip about Propagteam decals recently. If you can submerge the whole model under water float the decal from the carrying paper to the model. That way induces the least amount of stress to the decal.)

Conclusion

This model is as close to the Luft '46 crowd as I care to go. Since a prototype existed this aircraft is "in bounds" for me. However, I still have to justify my paint scheme. Every aspect of the kit is well thought out, with the exception of the single canopy. This attention to detail will help insure a successful build. I would be very surprised if one of these models ever took a short test flight into the round file due to frustration during building. If it flies while you are painting, well, that is your problem. It looks to be a very enjoyable little kit to build from this end of the project.

Roll Models carries the He-162C as well as the complete line of Planet Models.