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I originally had in mind to do these for the recent P-51 Mustang Gb, there was no way I was going to get a start for these before Christmas but from memory, it was about mid January I pulled them out, even got around to taking sprue photos for both of them. Plenty of time, right. Nah. This is, I think, the original Hasegawa P-51D, I'm not sure if I'd assembled the wings years ago or bought it thus. I tend to choose older or lesser kits for GBs so I don't feel the pressure to make them too good. Yeah right. I still couldn't resist opening up the radiator & oil cooler ducts & doing seat belts in the cockpit. This in the Intech kit reboxed by Smer, I chased it down for the decal options & I should have just kept the decals & binned the kit, it really was a stinker, fairly obviously a copy of the Hasegawa P-51B/C kit but not a good one. The only time I mentioned my intention was when @stevej60 showed keen to have a crack at a Mistercraft boxing of the same kit. I can only assume he looked closer at it & saw the light. This didn't have any representation of the radiator & oil cooler ducts, barely even lines to follow & of course stupid here just couldn't resist fixing that. The plastic in the belly of this kit was close to 2mm thick & really took some hacking out. The Propagteam decals were beautifully printed but oh so thin & after fluking the first underwing D-day stripes decal into place first go I felt confident we were onto a winner, the next one fixed that notion hence the ones under the starboard wing area are painted on. The rest got some Microscale Liquid Decal Film & went on just fine. Anyway, thats where it stayed, for pretty much the next two months, I didn't even register a thread for them, for a couple of reasons, it just wasn't happening, we had a new cat in the house, a totally manic wee Burmese tom, as daft as a loon, mad as a box of frogs type manic, so any chance I had of using my temporary modelling roost, a tray on the dining table was sunk. Eventually I managed to cobble together a corner in the basement, in front of some shelves that will eventually become a display case, with a folding wooden table, the sort of thing you might eat your dinner off in front of the TV, & a fold down chair, so as I could contract when finished. & so I began. Progress was slow to begin with & I became aware I wasn't taking WIP shots, that had been my next plan once the GB thing passed by, I managed precisely one, at quite an advanced stage of construction. So about a week ago, I finally decided they were done as much as I could be bothered, there is some more to get on with & hopefully, now I'm set up, sort of, I can make progress on these. Thus without more ado, a pair of Mustangs from the group known as the Blue Nosed Motherless Children of Bodney. The eagled eyed among you will see they're both coded HO-M. The P-51D is Petie 2nd flown by Colonel John Meyer of the 487FS 357th FG, the P-51B Little Anne from the same outfit but flown by Lt Glenn Moran. For those who might think the latter shouldn't have its inner gear doors down, see here. The Hasegawa kit, old that it was, went together, as one would expect, quite well but required a fair bit of filler, the Smer kit like wise but only after a lot of dry fitting, scraping sanding & pfaffing around. After gluing the fuselage I then found the canopy was too narrow so I broke out my 2/3 scale sihrsc file to thin the rear razor back till it fitted & then rescribed some of the major panel lines. The blue nose on the P-51C was Humbrol 14 straight from the tin, the P-51D got Humbrol 25 with about 20% 14 added to it. I've no way of knowing how correct they are but they look about right to me. Steve.