He-219 Gets her wings

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The Balkenkreuz looks a bit strange indeed. Although you'll probably never know what happened when they originally painted it.
 
an interesting point and I have seen the fotos from the 90's when they got down to the original faded welle pattern is that this is an A-2 which should not have had the ground attack scheme painted on it but A-5 and a-7's would have.....so this is unique. I also believe their rendition of the welle is incorrect as well as the colouration but they are trying their best with what they have. when I was in correspondence with Tom D. back in 2000-2001 he mentioned thus : 2 different schemes under the American applied paint job. careful sanding and IR photography to determine the original camo and markings before conducting corrosion control and repair of hanger rash. the airframe will then be repainted in one of the 2 schemes it carried during it's operational life.

the A/c is relatively complete, we have most of the avionics, including radio and FuG 220 display. The most challenging part of the project is finding missing components as the radar arrays including the rear/tail warning radar antenna and the special mounted revi 16 gunsignt for the SM . The A/C had 2 wing mounted 20mm and 2 belly tray-outboard 20mm no inward 20mm's.

back to the welle patter though called the night ground attack scheme I./NJG 1 never flew these type of missions but there is foto evidence of Bf 110 G-4's and Ju 88G-6's with this very scheme and yes they did fly day/night ground attack in 1945.
 
Interesting debate on this. The Balkenkreuz look way too wide for me too, but if tbey are correct as Dave (VB) says, then ful credit to the team for painting her in accurate (if highly unusual) markings.
 
Here is the e-mail I got back.




Dear Mr. Bower,

thank you for your email. When we published the images of the He 219 wing rotation online, we were fully aware that we will get responses like yours, because, frankly, many markings on the wing seem to be wrong. At least, they are not according to regulation. And we knew this would trigger responses. Model builders especially would be upset that the only surviving He 219 does not look in every detail as the He 219 models do, which were based on careful studies of images and documents surviving the war.

We know that your comments are correct, and probably based on very detailed expertise of German regulations (possibly due to model building?), and many images you have seen. But what we studied was the actual wing we had at our disposal. Our restoration team spent many hours carefully and slowly sanding down the original wing, looking for all layers of paint on it, and photographing every single step. We also studied sources (images, regulations, publications) and quickly realized that our wing was not according to regulation. And we discussed how to proceed: Do we want to restore a generic aircraft (as it should have been according to regulation) or the authentic aircraft we had right there, in our workshop? We decided to restore the plane in the most authentic way, with the original markings exactly as we found them.

We also carefully studied the conditions our He 219 aircraft was built under, and quickly realized one timeless fact: There are regulations, and then there is ... life. Towards the end of the war, Germany was under increasing Allied air superiority - aircraft production was heavily decentralized, taking place mostly underground, and done mostly by slave labor. There was a multitude of attempts to speed up production significantly, leading to sloppy labor, simplification of the production process, and definitely little or no attention to regulations. In fact, Dave Wilson, our restoration expert for the painting of the aircraft, can point to many amazing examples for this on our actual aircraft, and we might follow up on this in a later blog.

These examples are clear proof of the production conditions, which are an inseparable part of the history of our aircraft. By restoring them carefully we made sure we secured the aircraft's authenticity, and secured an important piece of German history of World War II. I can assure you that the restoration took place with utmost attention to every detail, and careful consideration of how to proceed. As a result, we have a He 219 wing that is a perfect time capsule, and a most authentic artifact, commenting in its own, unique voice to the reality of history (and how this reality differs from regulations, and our assumptions). And that, we think, is truly fascinating.

I hope that my explanation delivers a satisfying answer to your comments. Also, I sincerely thank you for your comment - I see it as a clear sign of your passion for aircraft, and a strive to keep history correct. We at NASM appreciate this very much because this is a goal we all should share, and work for every day - even when it sometimes leads to results we did not expect.

Best wishes,

Evelyn Crellin

Dr. Evelyn Crellin
Click to expand...
 
I'm satisfied. The ironic thing is if that restoration was done today, they quite possibly would have just preserved what was the reason original and halted or repaired any corrosion with period Luftwaffe techniques and left a far less attractive, though more historically accurate relic. That is how far the thinking about aircraft preservation has changed from say the restoration of the Ebola Gay and the presentation of their P-61.
 
They make a good point regarding the chaos of the final months of the war. i read a story years ago, where the ground crews were out of camouflage paint and bartered with a nearby SS armor unit for the paint they needed. I am sure that if one of those improvised fighters were being restored today, it would create an uproar in the warbird community.

In the case of this He219 and several other captured aircraft, they were painted several times over and suffered weather and/or neglect that makes it very difficult to get an exact picture of how it actually was while in Luftwaffe service. The Ho229 is another example of the overpainting and then aging while in perpetual storage.

There have been museum warbirds that were hastily restored resulting in less than authentic presentations, especially in the 1960s and 1970s...which is clearly not that case here, with the NASM He219.

They have shown an incredible attention to detail, as I have mentioned earlier, right down to preserving the original finish that was concealed by the wings. So noticing something odd about the balkenkreuz just raised questions, and being human, mistakes can happen, it happens to everyone at one point or another.

And thanks for posting the reply, BP! :thumbleft:

(By the way, I had to laugh about the many "modeller" references) :lol:
 
A well written response and, frankly, not surprising. The NASM certainly has some of the best in the business working on their artifacts. Now bring on that Ta152!
 
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