Building
As
this is again a splendid kit from Hasegawa, building was straightforward with no
problems. I wanted to build a diorama of a P-47D having its guns removed from
the port wing, so I scratch built the ammo-bay and left it empty. The guns
are from AIRES, the ammo-cases, barrels and crates came from the spare parts
box. The other elements (ladder, blast tubes, ammo-guiding trays) were
scratch built as well.
I
added the brake lines to the landing gear (Luc Van den Ende made me the oleos
again!) and gave the tires another pattern. In the cockpit I added some
detail and I rebuilt the seat and its frame and I added the pilot’s straps.
The engine received some further detailing as well.
Click on
images below to see larger images
Painting
Painting
was based on a well known photo of a P-47D, based at Duxford, To give the effect
of a well-worn aircraft, firstly I sprayed an overall coat of aluminium, where
after I gave 2 coats of satin varnish. Once the last layer fully dry, I
sprayed RAF Dark Green on the upper surfaces and RAF Sky “Type S” on the
undersides. After the complete painting (invasion stripes, rudder colouring, ETO-bands,
white nose, markings, symbols), the carefully stripping away of small parts of
paint to create the effect of paint-wear was worked out.
Once
this painstaking job finished, I gave some different tones in the colours, using
pastels. I prefer this method to pre-shading, as I always can correct it
when it is overdone. Alter good cleaning, I sprayed an overall coat of gloss
varnish and applied the decals, which were the insignias, the serial numbers and
the checkers on the nose.
I
used Model Master paints and varnishes.
Weathering
As
a lot of weathering was already done, I only had to add a little contrast to
some panel lines and a bit of supplementary shading to places that suffer most
from the crew servicing the aircraft. The aluminium parts (landing gear, prop
hub) were given a darker pastel touch as well.
References
- P-47D
Thunderbolt in detail&scale
- P-47D
Thunderbolt in action
- Walk
Around P-47D
- Republic
P-47 Thunderbolt (MBI)
- Squadron/signal
Thunderbolt in the ETO
-
Yellow
Series
Republic
P-47
Thunderbolt
- P-47
Thunderbolt en action
- Mechanism
of Military Aircraft P-47 + P-51
Luc
Janssen
Click on
images below to see larger images
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