Academy Republic P-47 (captured German)

This is the first completion of 2014, and it is a type that I have a lot of experience with. It is an Academy P-47 razorback. Though I would say that the Tamiya kit is the gold standard for P-47s, the Academy version has the advantage of being generally available and fairly cheap as well.

As happens so often - see the entry concerning the Desert Snake Ju-87 that I currently have in the construction queue - this project was inspired by a decal sheet. While rummaging through the decal stash looking for another sheet, I ran across an older Three Guys set for a Tbolt that was captured by the Luftwaffe. Well, captured is probably being generous; the poor fellow landed at the wrong airfield in France and quickly discovered that all the people staring at him from the ramp were wearing the wrong uniforms.

The P-47 had quite a career. It was examined by the research staff at Rechlin, and even starred in a German propaganda film. The Three Guys sheet gives you markings for all the incarnations, including the fake US markings that were used in the film. The nice thing was that the Germans apparently liked the nose art, because they specifically did not paint over it while adding the yellow testing squadron patches to nose and tail. Sounds like even the Hun had some art sense once in a while.

Though I am very careful with Three Guys decals to keep them away from setting solutions, the markings settled down just fine. An earlier experience with colors running has made me cautious with them. About the only problem I had with the decals was that they didn't quite fit between the yellow patches on the port side. No reason to assume this was the decals fault; it is just as likely that my painting the yellow parts was not exact. The solution was to fit tiny slices of white decal stock to cover the shortfall between the white stripe (actually a white cowl marking on the original plane) and the yellow part. Hopefully it isn't too noticeable unless you are looking for it. In any case it is a unique set of markings to set amongst all the nose art examples in my display case.

This is completed model #436 (#1 for the year), finished in January of 2014.