German Henschel 123A
This plane was designed in 1934 as a dive bomber, tested in Spain, and proved itself in Poland. However the plane soon became obsolete, with bi-planes going the way of the do-do. The Henschel 123 was the last bi-plane produced by Germany. It was superceded by the Junkers Ju dive bomber, a far superior mono-plane. The Henschel did however have very good bomb accuracy (mainly because it was slow), was very sturdy and could survive major enemy fire, and it was fairly agile for its size. But, it was just too slow to keep up with modern planes. The Henschel served at the front lines up until mid-war in Russia, but went on carrying supply packages, training, and sometimes participated in actual combat through out the war.
First off, a note on scale: I began this model off of detailed 3 view pictures in the Marshal Cavendish WWII encyclopedia. The pictures show a pilot in the seat and I attempted to build the plane around a mini-fig's size. It looks way too huge, I know. Its ridiculous putting my lego pilot next to the plane. But, the lego mini-fig body is actually the item out of scale. In the picture, all that's visible in the pilot seat is a head, and the lego minifig head is way too large for a mini-fig. So, the plane is to scale with the mini-figs head, not his body.
Modifications:
-Propeller pieces have the hinge shaved off so they can fit all together nicely
One of my favourite parts of this model is the bomb carrying elements. The 100lb bomb clips are little plastic wheel axle clips that hold the bomb just snug, allowing you to flick them off when divebombing Russian infantry. The 400lb bomb is attached with a 2X1 fork piece with pins, and the bomb just squeezes in.
Unfortunately, the propeller does not turn. The tail is also not particularly to my liking...I just seemed to run out of good pieces, and perhaps a little creativity. I tried a 1X sloped element tail fin but it looked way too fat, especialy next to the thin horizontal tail wings.
I didn't notice while taking this pictures that the top propeller was bent. damn.
total bomb load: 1 400lb bomb, 4 100lb bombs
the pilot's view
note the machine gun barrels, one on either side of the top propeller
SNOT technology
