COBI Messerschmitt Me 163B Komet Set 5766

COBI's Messerschmitt Me 163B Komet is a 1:32 model built from 543 blocks, 18.5 cm long with a 29 cm wingspan. A new brick was made for the glazed canopy, which opens for the pilot figure. The control surfaces move, and the display stand has an adjustable pin that locks with brick wedges, so the model can be posed at any angle.

Twelve minutes of fuel

The Komet is the only rocket-powered aircraft ever used in combat. It climbed to 9,000 metres in about three minutes and passed 1,000 km/h, which no propeller fighter could approach.

Then the fuel ran out. Powered flight lasted roughly seven and a half minutes, after which the aircraft was a glider with one chance at a landing, on a skid, on a specific airfield. It took off on a jettisoned trolley and came down with nothing to steer with but airspeed.

The fuel was the enemy

The Komet burned two liquids that ignite on contact with each other and need no spark. T-Stoff was concentrated hydrogen peroxide; C-Stoff a hydrazine and methanol mixture.

T-Stoff dissolved organic material — cloth, leather, skin. Ground crews and pilots wore protective suits made from a special acid-resistant fibre, and even so a leak in the cockpit was catastrophic in a way that has no equivalent in any other aircraft. A rough landing that ruptured a tank could destroy the aeroplane and its pilot without any fire at all.

More Komet pilots were killed by their own aircraft than by the enemy. Around 370 were built and they shot down perhaps nine to sixteen Allied bombers in total.

The figure

The pilot in this set is a woman, and she is not generic. Hanna Reitsch was one of Germany's most prominent test pilots and flew the Me 163 during development. On one flight the take-off trolley failed to release and struck the airframe; she brought the aircraft down anyway and was very badly injured, fracturing her skull and her face. She wrote up the flight from her hospital bed.

Specifications

Pieces: 543 · Figures: 1 test pilot · Scale: 1:32 · Adjustable locking display stand · No stickers
Model dimensions: 18.5 × 29 × 8.5 cm (7.3 × 11.4 × 3.3 in), 18.5 cm high on the base