The Me.1101 never flew.   It was proposed as a German advanced fighter with swept wings.  The nearly-complete prototype was captured by US forces and shipped back to the USA where it was completed and flew as the Bell X-5.   Studies of the Bell X-5 led to the development of the NA F.86 Sabre jet fighter.

 This is the first 1946 Luftwaffe kit and the first Dragon kit I’ve ever built.  I was coerced into building it when my Melbourne model club (NAM) got lots of them for $5 each and made it the Identical Kit subject of our annual club competition.

The boxart was very impressive – Me.1101’s attacking some B.32 Dominator bombers.   The box held two sprues with 62 very crisp parts (including 24 for the 4 missiles), 1 very clear canopy, and a small fret holding 5 etched-metal parts.  Fit of the parts was excellent – only marred by the overly-large etched metal pieces for the tops of the side instrument panels.   The model had a small but adequate cockpit (seat, stick, 3 x panels, pedals & gun sight), and parts that enabled the belly doors to gape open, to expose the engine.

 Instructions were larger than the model, and in 6 languages.  The decals were just digits (so make-up your own numbers) in two colours, with generic outline crosses and some stencilling.  No swastikas though.  

I approached this project with the knowledge that there would be 20 other Me.1101’s on the table, all sitting on their wheels and all with their belly doors open and showing-off their engines.   I wanted mine to standout from the crowd.   Dry-fitting told me that the belly engine-access doors and U/C doors fitted into their places very closely.   That, and the fact that there were four missiles, led me to recall an idea that I had kept ticked away in the back of my tiny brain.   The only piece that the kit lacked was a pilot figure – raid the spares box.

I quickly painted and built the engine tube and the two pieces it contained.   As it would be enclosed, I didn’t have to paint, stain or detail it’s outsides – bonus!   The inside of the fuselage was a bit fiddly because of a lack of clear direction from the instructions.   I built the whole cockpit (less the rudder pedals), but the pilot hid just about everything – another bonus.  He was a BIG bloke, and needed a lot of trimming to get him in the seat.   I had to keep test-fitting to ensure that the canopy would fit over him.  

 At the same time, I attached the UC doors to the belly engine-access doors, then attached these assemblies to the fuselage sides.   The fuselage haves went together beautifully, trapping the engine inside.  Now I had trouble.  The engine didn’t line-up with the nose intake or the tail pipe – probably my fault.  So I glued them and used appropriate-sized drill bits to hold them in place till the glue set.   A lot of putty was needed around the tail-pipe.   I produced a nice round exhaust port be puttying around the drillbit, and not removing it till the whole area was sanded smooth.  The tail-cone assembly, complete with the tailplanes, went on next.  It required filling where the front of the cone met the rear of the fuselage.   For neatness, I rescribed the engraved detail that crossed the spine’s construction seam.  Lastly, the wings, without their weapons pylons, were attached without the need for filler – nice for a change!     

As an experiment, I brush-painted a few different panels with different colours (gloss red, matt black, Goblin Green, gloss white, just to name a few) then sprayed the model with Gunze H45 Light blue.   When seen close-up, the under-colours impart a faint, noticeably-different hue to the blue, visible as a paneling effect.  The blue came out more vivid than I would have liked, but I fobbed it off by saying that this is a high-altitude fighter – it works.  I masked-off the blue then sprayed the rest with Gunze H70 RLM Grey #2.   To get the camouflage pattern exactly right, I photo-enlarged the instructions till it was 1/72-scale, then cut-out the pieces to make my masks.   Obviously, this method is 100% accurate.  Tamiya IJN Green completed the camouflage.

 This is when I decaled it.  They went on with MicroSol/Set assistance.  I added swastikas from a Microscale sheet of them, and an anti-dazzle patch from a black decal sheet.   The stencilling drove me nuts (because of the lack of size – but ALL stencilling does).   I made my aircraft the No.8 aircraft of No. 31 Staffel.  I put the numbers on the nose as per the instructions, and used different colours, offset, for variety.  

 More building and the finish.

I brush-painted the nose-ring bright red (Defence if the Reich?) to add a bit more colour, then attached it.   Dry-fitting told me that it fit very well and so wouldn’t need filler.  I brush-painted the canopy frame black and attached it with Krystal Kleer.   The missiles were assembled, then had their tail-pipes drilled-out and were sprayed.  I chose the white scheme, not the cam upper and sky lower scheme, because I can’t think of a good reason to cam such small missiles.  Two were attached to their pylons and the pylons attached to the outer hard-points.  The other two missiles were mounted onto the thinnest pieces of piano wire I could find.  A piece of cottonball was threaded over each wire (for later) and superglued to the tail of the missiles.   The free end of each wire was bent up just short of its tip and this short bit was superglued into a small hole drilled into the pylons.   The wire lay on the bottom of the pylon with the help of superglue.  Now, the cottonball was teased out along the wire (and beyond) to hide it, and the pylons were glued to the inner hard-points.   I used different lengths of wire for a little variety.  Last piece to be attached was the delicate etched metal DF loop(?) on the spine.

 I bought some acrylic rod, taped it onto an empty can, and heated it in my Wife’s oven at 180 degrees C.   The rod softened with the heat and bent over the can to form a big hairpin bend, with the two ‘arms’ almost parallel.  The longer arm was shoved into a hole I drilled into the side of a wooden square.   The other (shorter) end was sharpened in a pencil sharpener and the point superglued into the Me.1101’s tailpipe (bet that hurts).  I put the plane in a slight bank to starboard (the right) for a little variation, and she was done.   My Me.1101 is charging-in and firing two of its missiles.   The general reaction was “Hey, neat!!”  

This is a great little kit – the first I’ve built with supplied etched metal parts.   If I had to re-do this model, I’d re-think about how to mount it on that acrylic rod.   I’d ensure that it could disassemble for transportation.  Despite the engine fit problem, I’d tell all modellers to have a go at this one.   And you don’t have to slavishly follow the painting guide -  nobody can say your colour scheme is wrong because of the all-liberating 1946 Luftwaffe tag.  Use your imagination/creativity and have a ball.   Incidentally, I photographed this one against the sky to force the camera to focus on the model, not the background.

None used.  Only my imagination.