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Having just finished up on the 1/72 XP-72 Super Thunderbolt, I am trying to stay on a roll by starting on a model that I have always wanted, but heretofore could not figure how get. I THINK that I have finally figured out how to do it, because I'm just tired of waiting for all you lazy people out there to do it for me! So, with great hope, and no guarantee, here we go... First up, the famous bird, the very first of the actual P-47 line to be built, the XP-47B. Both the proposed XP-47 and the XP-47A proposals were never built, as they would have been under powered and totally unsuited for war. Here is what the beast looked like: Among the most notable differences between the XP-47B and the later XP-47D variants were: (1) 8" shorter nose section (2) totally different rear side view windows, and (3) the fewer cooling flaps on the cowling. These are all obstacles to be overcome if we are to model this variant. The kit I chose to hack up was this one: the Academy 1/72 Razorback kit. I have the slightly better Tamiya kit on hand, but as I don't have a razorback "D" in the collection yet, I will save the Tamiya kit for it's intended use. I also have several of the old Hasegawa kit (parts of which were used in the XP-72 build, mentioned earlier) but they didn't meet the simple criteria that the rear-view glass on either side fit snugly into the window cutout. This kit does, and we will eventually see why this is important. While the Academy kit has a decent cockpit, I will use the True Details P-47D-M set instead. We begin by holding the two kit fuselage halves together, and gluing ONLY the two rear cockpit join lines indicated by the arrows, below: Middle above, the rear cockpit interior is cut away from the fuselage halves, using a razor saw, the thinnest one I could find. Next, above right, the rear canopy molding is taped along the rear vertical panel lines and scribed a few times, in preparation for cutting the rear parts off: Next, after adding some .005" plastic card to make up for the razor saw kerf, the rear side windows are glued to the fuselage halves: Above right, after drying the entire front of the turtle-deck, including the rear side windows, is then sawn from the fuselage halves, as shown. OOPS -- BEFORE that, the door part of the left fuselage side was cut out and glued to the center part of the kit canopy, shown loosely setting in position, below: Above right, the white plastic card spacer is cut down flush to the inside and outside of the canopy, and the whole thing is sanded very smooth, including areas of filler, shown in red. More sanding, filling and a couple of dips into the old bottle of Future will hopefully yield masters suitable for making new clear parts with casting resin. WE will see how that turn out. More later. Stay tuned for more butchery, and possibly, foul language, suitably blanked out... Ed