1/72 Trumpeter - A couple of P-40s

[VG 33]

Hello

 

I have finished this couple of 1/72 Trumpeter early U.S. Army P-40s. This kit is not the best but as I had them in my stash it was the opportunity.

 

First I built a very early P-40 with only two machine guns in the wings and from the 20th Pursuit Group in California at the beginning of 1941. AT the time there used to be stars upon and under both wings and a striped rudder.

 

 

 

 

Next come a P-40B from the 15th Pursuit Group based on Wheeler Field, Hawaï on December 5th, 1941.

This one had only stars on upper port and under starboard wings, and no more rudder stripes. There are 4 guns in the wing leading edge.

You could see I have used different colours for these two kits as I wanted to mark the differences between Olive Drab 31 and Grey 33 for the P-40 and the Olive Drab 41 and Neutral Gray 43 for the P-40B.

 

 

 

Comments are welcome.

 

Patrick

[RidgeRunner]

It’s always good to heap deserved praise on builds that perpetuate the gentleman’s scale ;). I’m very happy to do so.

Very nice.

 

Martin

[stevej60]

Two superb early P-40's Patrick,I do love the striped tail scheme.

[Val_Ukraine]

Lovely early P-40's! Not the best kits from Academy but great models from Patrick! 

[Phantome]

13 hours ago, Val_Ukraine said:

Lovely early P-40's! Not the best kits from Academy but great models from Patrick! 

 

It's a Trumpeter kit, the Academy kit is much more primitive. The Trumpeter kit is the best P-40B for surface detail but sadly has a very toy-like canopy.

[Phantome]

Good stuff on the kits! Just one little-known accuracy issue that you still have time to correct: for your Pearl Harbor aircraft, the bare metal propellers were actually painted maroon on the rear facing sides. The color did not extend all the way down but only a few inches before reaching the spinner, ostensibly only to cover the part of the propeller that would be visible from the cockpit.

 

I found this while building my own Pearl Harbor P-40 and, unfortunately, most kits' instructions just say all metal or black rear sides (which is incorrect). I corrected it quite easily even after initially painting the rear sides black.

 

Here's a picture of "337", destroyed at Pearl Harbor. You can clearly see the demarcation line:

 

 

And some color pictures:

 

http://www.ascalecanadian.com/2015/09/maroon-19-and-usaac-and-usaaf.html

[VG 33]

1 hour ago, Phantome said:

Good stuff on the kits! Just one little-known accuracy issue that you still have time to correct: for your Pearl Harbor aircraft, the bare metal propellers were actually painted maroon on the rear facing sides. The color did not extend all the way down but only a few inches before reaching the spinner, ostensibly only to cover the part of the propeller that would be visible from the cockpit.

 

I found this while building my own Pearl Harbor P-40 and, unfortunately, most kits' instructions just say all metal or black rear sides (which is incorrect). I corrected it quite easily even after initially painting the rear sides black.

 

And some color pictures:

 

http://www.ascalecanadian.com/2015/09/maroon-19-and-usaac-and-usaaf.html

HI

 

This is very interesting and now I remember when I built my Martin B-10 twenty years ago I painted the blades in something like maroon. At least I have painted here the back of the blades in black.

 

Patrick

[VG 33]

On this Wikimedia picture (public domain) we can suppose the back of the propeller is either lighter than black (maroon ?) or anodized aluminum.

 

Patrick

 

 

[VG 33]

1 hour ago, Phantome said:

 

It's a Trumpeter kit, the Academy kit is much more primitive. The Trumpeter kit is the best P-40B for surface detail but sadly has a very toy-like canopy.

Yes the worst point of this kit. I added at least the second clear glass inside the front canopy but I Ama not sure this was really the case for the first P-40s. 

 

Patrick

[Phantome]

27 minutes ago, VG 33 said:

On this Wikimedia picture (public domain) we can suppose the back of the propeller is either lighter than black (maroon ?) or anodized aluminum.

 

Patrick

 

 

Yeah, doesn't look black to me either. I honestly don't have much to add as I'm not an expert on P-40s...

[kapam]

Excellent P-40's, both!

The comments about prop colours are interesting too, thought they mean that my Airfix version (in same scale) is not quite accurate.🙄

Great work on those, though!