HISTORY

The P-51 was designed for the RAF, initially with no intention of service with the USAF. The first prototype, NA-73, flew on October 26, 1940. The P-51 entered production in 1941. This best known US fighter of WWII was built to British requirements. The British reluctantly accepted North American's proposal to design a new fighter for them, instead of license-building P-40s, and the USAAF was at first not interested at all. The P-51 was a clean and very refined design, with a laminar flow wing and carefully positioned radiator bath. The early P-51, with Allison V-1710 engine, was an excellent low-altitude reconnaissance fighter, but had low performance above 15000ft. After re-engining with the R.R. Merlin, the P-51B was one of the best fighters of WWII. It proved to be the ideal fighter to escort the bomber force on the long missions over Germany. The P-51D sacrificed some speed for the introduction of a 'bubble' hood, offering much better view. The P-51F, G and J versions were lightweight developments, with only a superficial resemblance to the original Mustang; the P-51H was more directly related to the P-51D, but powered by the more powerful V-1650-9 engine. After WWII, the P-51D played a very important role as fighter-bomber in Korea. 14819 built.

 

 

THE KIT

When I opened the box, everything was packaged very nicely. I was dissatisfied with the cheap demonstration of the wheel wells. Everything else looked fine, included are 6 missiles, and 2 external gas tanks, which I modified to give them a more realistic look. Overall lines and shape look good. The wheels are plastic and not rubber.

                                                            CONSTRUCTION

Building this kit, was pretty easy, there were a few errors that I will mention later on. Building the cockpit was simple, jus a left and right electronics wall, pedals, joystick, a VERY basic seat, to which I glued two pieces of rubber to simulate seat belts. The rest of the plane went together pretty well. Up until I saw the .50 cal guns, they were HORRIBLE. I use a few needless that I put the opposite way (eye sticking out, the pointy side inside), which I taped wit some 3m masking tape. I then glued the 2 wing half’s together, let them dry, and moved onto the fuselage development. That was easy as well, I painted most of the fuselage in Tamiya Gloss Aluminum TS-17. I will talk more about the paint scheme in another section. When I glued all the parts together – fuselage and wings, I had a little problem. One was higher then the other or stuck out a little bit. Here comes the Exacto-knife and putty, sand paper, and more paint. That error was fixed, I re-scribed the panel lines. Now the time came to glue on the tail wings, which turned out to be a problem, so I melted some holes with a hot needle and inserted some nails, I also made holes in the tail fins applied some glue onto the fins, and pushed them onto the main body – kind of a support beam system. That idea worked out great, just added a little bit of putty in the areas in which you could still see some of the nail, and that’s all. Since this kit lacked some details in the under the wing section, I made 4 wires, simulating fuel lines that were connected to the external fuel supply tanks, those were connected into the fuel tank halves, glued on, and the same goes for the wings, I installed these fuel lines right before closing the wing halves. Another small mod. Was the addition of little screw caps on the external fuel tanks, these were simulated by the heads on a nail, again I melted a hole and installed these. I also installed a small targeting screen, that piece of plastic I took from my F-15E kit. I am not going into detail that much because there are SO many reviews about this kit – not the Douysha kit, but all of the other major brands. The review that I used as a guide for my kit can be found here. This guys review is wonderful he goes into a lot of detail.

PAINT & DECALS

I used the paint scheme of Moonbeam McSwine, I got this idea out of a book that I purchased from Barnes & Nobles, named Warbird Legends By John M. Dibbs. This is the BEST book for some external pictures of WWII era planes from all countries, very high detailed pictures and a great looking book. I haven’t yet purchased an air brush, so I used the Tamiya spray cans. By duck taping the areas that I didn’t want paint on, paint was applied and let dry for a period of 24 hours from the best cure possible. Then the parts were assembled as I described in the section above. Later I applied the decals that came with the kit. They were pretty nice and offered decals for two different aircraft. After everything dryed out, I applied a clear paint Tamiya spray can. I do this to give the plane some “Shinyness” and to make shure that the decals don’t come off.

CONCLUSIONS

This has been decent project, even though I did come across some awkward points, with the miss aligned parts and etc. I believe they could of done better the panel lines were nice. But the overall detail wasn’t great at all, the wheel wells feature absolutely nothing special in them. When you finish this kit it looks great on top of your table or on a shelf. I wouldn’t recommend buying this kit, unless you like to customize your kits a little bit.

REFERENCES

Roger Jackson's review of the kit 

http://m2reviews.cnsi.net/reviews/allies/us/jackson51d.htm

Warbird Legends By John M. Dibbs