What first got me into thinking about playing modern skirmish was watching the movie "Black Hawk Down". Combat in such a build up environment looked like the perfect tabletop challenge. And if this were the perfect challenge, why not replay it! And the perfect scenario for it? Securing one of the Mogadishu crash sites. I chose the first crash site (Black Hawk with call sign Super Six One) for I though that this would make for the more interesting scenario. The most important part of such a crash site is off course the crashed helicopter. So I needed a model that would fit my needs. Britania does one cast in resin, but I did not like the looks. The damage did not fit what I envisioned and it was not detailed enough, so I decided to go for a model kit. Since we are playing with 28mm minis we needed something that would look pleasing with them. Those are models in the range of 1:40th to 1:50th scale. What I ended up with was the Revell 1:48th scale kit of an MH-60L Black Hawk (stock # 04458). The kit is nearly perfect in that it is the right version of the helicopter. There are some part that will not be needed, but I will come to that in a moment.
First of all you need to assemble the kit. There are some things you need to leave off. Those are the Pilot door, the mid-air re-fueling lance and the pylons as these were not fitted in Mogadishu. Same goes for the co-pilots door, but that is cast to the main body so you will need to cut that out carefully (see picture). You should not fit the M-60 (those are wrong anyway), any clear plastic parts as well as the gunner windows and sliding doors as these will only hinder in painting or creating the crash damage later. Do not fit the rotor blades either - they went off during the crash. Any interior paintjobs should be done during assembly as well as applying any decals that are in the interior. Leave the forward instruments panel in the cockpit off since it will fit into the cockpit once you are finished anyway. Also shorten the cockpit floor by about 5mm. The picture shows my helicopter in this state of assembly with most open sections taped off with masking tape, because I air-brushed it later. Do not tape off the main opening of the cockpit at this stage, since it would only hinder you later on.
Next up is creating the damage. My research has shown that Super Six One came in circling round its main rotor (because of the tail rotor not functioning) with its nose raised. Its belly hit the roof / wall of a building in the narrow alley it would come down in. Most of the damage was to the building so the damage to the helicopter can be represent by simply painting some scratches to its underside later. This hit tilted the nose down sharply and it was the first part to hit the ground. The damage to the helicopter was severe enough for the other troops that arrived to know at once that the pilots could not have survived. So the final damage on the model needs to represent this by reducing the space within the cockpit to a drastic level. Also the helicopter rolled onto its pilot (left) side at once before other parts hit the ground which would indicate slightly more force to that side of the nose. This is a result of the fact that a Black Hawks rotor turns counter-clockwise and so will the helicopter once the tail rotor is lost.
So I cut a small wedge out of the hull below the pilots door. I bend the nose a good deal back, slightly moving it to the pilots side. The plastic will want to mimic its original shape. So you need to prevent it from doing so. Hold the place where the plastic bends besides the flame from a candle until the plastic keep sits desired shape.
Be careful not ignite the plastic itself and beware of the fumes since they are toxic!
This part is why you had to shorten the floor, cut the wedge out and leave the panel off there simply would not have been enough space here after bending.
You will have a gap in the hull where you cut the wedge out and the two sides of the cut shifted over each other. You will later have to fill that with Green Stuff (or something similar). See to it that this actually gets wavy, since you want to represent crushed metal. Think about the way a car looks after a crash.
After the front had crashed and the helicopter had rolled on its side the tailboom crashed to the ground. One of the PJ´s (US Air Force Special Forces medic) on the scene mentioned that it was bent. So you should bend it some to the co-pilots side using the same technique used for the nose, just that you do not have to cut anything out. I would do the same thing with the tail wing. In fact I did. If the force was enough to bend the tail it sure must have bend it, too. I bend it down using the same technique again. I imagined that the helicopter would still do a slight motion once it lay on its side which is why I bend it down. Since both the hull and the wing are two part and the line where it they fit together runs at a 90° angle to the direction that you bend a gap will open between the two halves. You can not help this, so you will have to fill those gaps with green stuff as well.
The last thing you need to do is cut the tail wheel off. It is cast in a position it would take when the helicopter was rolling forward and it would not stay in this position once it lay on its side. Do it carefully because you will need to glue it back on in a position that gravity would force on it.
What I did on the assumption that some of the part would hit the ground pretty hard, was break the landing gear on the pilots side of as well as some of the footsteps and antennae. Some of these were only bend, but that is a matter of taste.
Take a look at the pictures and they will give you a taste of the final result. On them the cockpit is completely taped off now. The white you see sticking to it at some places is just plaster that stuck to it when I fitted the terrain board to the chopper.
Next up come painting it all and attaching the parts you left of earlier to make work easier. (Do not attach those parts that were left off because they were not used in real life.)
When you paint the body of Black Hawk it should be done in black. 160th SOAR (the unit that provided air transport for Task Force Ranger) often paints its helicopter black and they did that in Somalia.
For the details you can follow the instructions. Paint the rotorblades you left off as well - they can be strewn over the tabletop. There are two things you should add though. One is the graffiti under the co-pilots door (see photo from the original helicopter). There was one on the pilots side as well, but since it is lying on that side and it would be hidden from view you need not paint that on. The other thing is that the Black Hawk had the numerals of their call-signs painted onto one of the windows of each sliding door. In case of Super Six One it was the forward window. So you should paint a "61" on it. If you do it before you fit the clear plastic into the door remember that the short sides are the upper and lower edge of the window.
Now you have to attach those parts you left out. I would paint the sliding doors and window frames separately before fitting the clear plastic into them and attaching them to the model. I would leave the windows in the nose out completely since they were smashed during the crash. The "windshield" will off course not fit into the model after the bending you did. Unfortunately its steel supports are cast into the clear plastic as well. You can not cut them out and bend them, since the clear plastic is too brittle for that. What I did was cut out strips of appropriate length and width from the clear plastic that come on blister for minis. Not because it is clear, but it bends easily. I glued those into the appropriate spots of the opening, making sure that it looked like they were crumbled by the force of the crash and later painted it in the colour of the chopper.
Earlier on I mentioned that the M-60 that come with the kit are wrong. Back then they were equipped with M-134 miniguns instead. I found that the kit for the Italeri Pave Hawk (which uses many of the same sprues but has the wrong sensor array) contains the right miniguns. I got their German distributor to sell me 4 of them separately (for this kit and another one... Super Six Eight). If that is not an option for you Cobra Company in the US ( www.cobracompany.com ) does some as an upgrade. Remember that your black Hawk is on its side so you should fit the guns appropriately.
The decals that come with the kit are all right, you make sure that you do not fit any of the graffiti decals.
Here are two photos that show the final model on its board (.5m x .5m) which will act as the centrepiece for the final tabletop set-up. You may note that the helicopter is in a small alley while it was on a wide plaza in the movie and that the buildings around it are only 1 storey high. This board was build according to reports by the participants and from info gained from satellite photos from that day and photo taken by an AP reporter the day after.
So this actually is more accurate then the movie, since they had to make do with what they found on location outside Somalia.
 |    |
