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History: : The Hs 129 was designed to fill the role of close air support for ground troops, which required it to be heavily armoured for survivability. It was an all-metal, cantilever low wing monoplane, and first flew in the spring of 1939. Many problems slowed its development, including performance and handling issues, along with poor pilot vision. It finally entered service in April 1942, using more powerful French radial engines that had been captured. Unfortunately, the French engines were unreliable, and also very vulnerable to battle damage, and even with the updated engines, the plane was still underpowered. The demands of the Eastern Front, however mandated that the plane be put into service, and 843 "B" models were delivered.

In 1943 the "B-2" model was developed, incorporating all of the improvements of the earlier production runs. Shortly after, provisions were made to equip the plane with under-fuselage attachments for anti-tank weapons. The first of which was a 30mm cannon, which was soon replaced by a 37mm gun. The installation of this larger gun required the removal of the machine guns to yield more room for the cannon's ammunition. By 1944, these weapons were no longer effective against improving enemy tanks, therefore some 25 planes were modified to carry a 75mm cannon (converted PaK 40) in a jettisonable under-fuselage module.

The Kit: The model was built almost entirely out of the box using the aged AMT/ERTL kit, and was started before the introduction of the much nicer offering by Hasegawa. Isn't that always the way it happens? Probably the best thing about the kit is that a selection of engine fairings, bombs and under-fuselage weapons are provided so that all variants could be built. It actually does capture the look of the aircraft well enough, however, the overall quality of the kit is poor. All of the detail is very soft, the cockpit detail is pretty crude, the wing leading edge is too blunt, and the trailing edge is too thick. There was a ton of flash everywhere, and all of the joints required a lot of filling, and finally the decals are very thick.

With all of that said, it is no surprise that most of the modifications performed were to fix the kit. The leading edge of the wings was rounded off and the trailing edge was thinned, and the slots for the guns in the nose were filled, because they were deleted on this version to make room for more ammo for the big gun. Probably the most notable modification made to the kit was the simulated spinning props. They were cut from acetate circles, and black paint was "feathered" on with an airbrush. The acrylic rod holding the kit was heated in the oven and formed around a coffee can, and lastly, the pilot figure came from the spares box.

The kit was painted with Gunze paints, and Super Scale International decals were substituted for the poor kit provided decals. The topside of the plane was lightly sanded to knock down the raised panel lines, and a dark wash was applied to the underside. Finally, rust pastel chalk was dusted on the exhaust pipes, and black pastels were used for the exhaust stains.