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Hi all, being quite a fan of air racers I through in the only P-47 (almost-) racer that I know of: Bill Odom’s YP-47M “Reynolds Bombshell”. A brief history (no guarantee whether it is all correct): The pilot William P Odom (1919-1949) Captain of the US Army Air Corp was quite famous in the forties for some breaking some record flights. He made two record around-the-world flights in an Invader (April 1947 with Tex Salee and Milton Reynolds & August 1947 solo flight with auto-pilot) and made a solo flight in an early Beech Bonanza from Hawaii to Teterboro New Jersey (6th-8th March 1949). In 1949 Odom raced a Mustang named “Beguine” in Cleaveland and won the SOHIO race but fatally crashed two days later in the second lap of the Thomson race (see my Beguine build here: http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234963769-1-48-icm-xs-models-p-51-beguine-in-flight/). Two years earlier Odom planned to start the Bendix race with a P-47M called “Reynolds Bombshell”. He bought a YP-47M in July 1947 (Serial #: 42-27385 – a P-47D-27-RE which was converted to a YP-47M in October 1944) and attached two huge 315 gal underwing tanks to it. These tanks were used as ferry tanks on P-38 and it seems there also existed a ambulance pod for the P-38 based on this type of tank with a Perspex nose to look out. The tanks were available as surplus – some may know the belly tank salt lake race cars which were build using these surplus tanks. The speed of the M version and the extended range provided by the additional 630 gal of fuel promised a short flight time and good chances to win the Bendix race. Sponsors were the same as for the RTW flights in the Invader in the same year: Milton Reynolds (a ball pen manufacturer), Dallas Aero Service (they did the race conversion) and Lear (auto-pilot manufacturer). The certificate of airworthiness was released in August 1947 – the month of the Bendix race. However on the morning of the race a huge puddle of kerosene was fund under the P-47M and Odom withdraw from the start for obvious safety reasons. The plane was never entered in a race again and sold on to Earl Reinert in 1948 ( who wanted to enter it in the Bedix race as well but did not in the end - I do not know why not) and received different liveries over the years. It now resides in Yanks Air Museum, Chino, CA converted back to its original configuration and livery. It is the only P-47M which still exists. Here is a pic of Reynolds Bombshell (I found it on the Yanks Museum webpage) which also shows the different colours on the nose and tail quite good: For this build I will have to deal with the following: • No decals for Reynolds Bombshell exist. No readily available ones at least, so I have to make them myself. • I only found a few photos of this plane and all are b&w and of low quality. So the colours are guesswork. • No 315 gal tanks exist in any scale. Again I have to make these myself somehow. • One picture shows the plane with two different tire profiles. • Military equipment was removed – so some minor surgery is needed. • The wingtips were shortened – again a minor change. I have this build on my list for quite some time so the good news is I have the decals done last year already and also started work on the tanks some time ago. Getting information on these is tough to say the least. Wheels with different pattern are readily available – I bought some from Ultracast. Regarding the colours my current idea is that it was over all white with blue cowl and Text on the sides. The tail was a different colour – I suppose red is a good call. The race numbers were either black or blue as well – I am not sure but think black is more likely. The wingtips seem to be the same colour as the tail so red for me. Droptanks NMF. Any suggestions welcome. Off the shelf I use the fantastic Tamiya P-47M kit; Eduard Zoom set (contains mainly parts for the cockpit); Tiny Land fuel caps (for the DIY tanks) and Ultracast wheels of two different thread patterns. I once primed some parts with colour as I had my airbrush loaded for some other project. Some of these colours need to be overpainted however: To be continued very soon. René