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Hi all, this is my contribution to the 453rd Museum build, an excellent way of remembering those who fought and lost their lives at that dark time. Jim, the curator is an incredibly nice chap and doing all this off his own bat, so it's a pleasure to help out. We were given a choice of kits to build and while I would normally have been happy to build several, due to a lack of time, I opted to build a pair of 1/48th P-38 Lightnings, a unique and interesting aircraft. A while back the first of a pair of 1/48th Tamiya P-38s arrived on my doorstep, along with appropriate aftermarket PE and decals. As Crisp (Ex-FAAWAFU) is in the process of building a P-38F belonging to the 1st Fighter Group, 8th Air Force I opted for a P-38G of the 78th FG to mix things up a little. This aircraft will be P-38G 42-12926 '10' Mackie of the 82nd Fighter Squadron, 78th Fighter Group, 8th Air Force based at Goxhill, near Kingston-Upon-Hull. These P-38s were only based in the UK for a short time before being transferred to the 12th AF ,North Africa to participate in Operation Torch in Feb 1943. The other model will be a P-38H of the 20th FG based at King's Cliffe which I'll add to this thread, once it arrives. All the praise heaped on the Tamiya kit is well deserved. The quality is exactly what is expected of Tamiya these days, perfect fit, crisply moulded parts and excellent detail. A perfectly good model can be built straight out of the box but as I already have some aftermarket for the kit, I've decided to use it here. Anyway, enough wiffle and on with the build. Crisp covered the contents of the box at the beginning of his build so there's no need to go through that here so I'll just concentrate on the build. The project will be a bit sporadic I'm afraid, due to other modelling commitments right now so please bear that in mind if nothing appears for a while. Looking through my EPDF books on the P-38 I managed to find a photo of '10' Mackie which will help in working out where everything went and the position of the camo demarcation lines. Interesting that the main wheels have their covers fitted while the nose wheel hasn't...and all that lovely British mud, the finest available. The American Air Museum in Britain (IWM) site will prove extremely useful. https://www.americanairmuseum.com/media/535 Thanks for looking and hope you enjoy it. Firstly, the obligatory box art, Jim supplied some aftermarket items including the Eduard Big-Ed PE set, (I'll only be using the instrument panel from the cockpit set but the airframe parts should prove useful). I have a review sample of the superb Quinta Studio 3D printed cockpit, unfortunately this is for the P-38F rather than the G, however, apart from the instrument panel which will come from the Big-Ed set, the rest can be used. The Eduard-Brassin Löökplus resin set, which includes wheels, superchargers, masks and instrument panel. The gun barrels are from Quickboost to replace the kit's underwhelming parts. First up will be the cockpit followed by the undercarriage bays. More soon. Melchie