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The very first photo is the same bird from what I have found.
If it was repainted to appear in Luftwaffe markings (the hakenkreuz is certainly inconsistant with the original placement), is it possible that the NASM is reproducing the latter markings (repaint) and not the original?The very first photo is the same bird from what I have found.
So you're waiting to see how this plays out before you start, eh?Like i said...stranger things have happened. And ultimately...I still have two unbuilt 1/72 Uhu's.
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