EagleCals #15 (Bf 109K-4s) and #16 (Bf 109G-10s) in 1/72 and 1/48 scale

By Chris Bucholtz

To be perfectly truthful, your editor is not the biggest fan of Luftwaffe fighters. Fw 190s and Bf 109s... Haven’t we seen enough of them? It takes a lot to get me to want to build one of these.

I say this because these sheets from EagleCals have me seriously considering adding a Messerschmitt to my shelves. Each sheet has four unique and colorful schemes, along with a large and very complete painting guide, an important help with the complexity of late-war German paint schemes. These decals are researched by aviation artist Jerry Crandall, and his fastidiousness pays off. Sheet #16 exemplifies this; the third aircraft pictured had the type 110 cowling, but instead of leaving you to do the research, the sheet includes two large line drawings that will let the modeler make the proper modifications to get an accurate Bf 109G-10.

All eight aircraft on the two sheets date from May 1945, at the fall of the Third Reich. Of special interest to U.S.-based modelers is the G-10 Yellow 5, flown by Horst Petzschler, who was one of the speakers at the 1998 IPMS/USA Nationals.

The decals themselves are lovely, but not the one-stop decals most of us are used to. The very complete stencil data (antenna masts, anyone? Wheel hubs? Drop tanks?) will cover one aircraft in its entirety and most of a second, and the printing (by MicroScale) is beautiful--you can read every umlaut! My review copies are 1/72 scale and every word is both in scale and quite legible. Some schemes require the modeler to paint the insides of the crosses RLM 74 before applying the white borders, but fortunately a paragraph of information gives the modeler plenty of help along the way. These instructions include idiosyncrasies like the lack of rudder trim tabs or the omission of antennae.

While some sheets provide you with colorful accents to stick on your model, these sheets truly immerse you in the subject. These are the kind of decals that can jump-start a project, even if it is something as oft seen as a Bf109! Our thanks to Eagle Editions for our review samples.