1/72

 P-51D Mustang
 Scorpion Squadron
Operation 'Kadesh', 1956

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This kit was built pretty much out of the box. I still consider Hasegawa's kit of the Mustang to be the most accurate in shape, and the easiest to build in 1/72. Construction started with the cockpit, which is pretty much as supplied in the kit. The only changes I made were some etched seat belts from the spares box, and after painting and installation into the fuselage, added a small square of clear styrene sheet for the top of the gunsight. The canopy cross brace also had the lightening holes drilled out. The cockpit floor was painted to simulate wood grain.

One shortcoming of this kit is the shallow wheel wells, which I decided to do nothing about. The main gear doors were glued closed, as was common to a recently shut-down Mustang on the flightline, to help hide the shallow wheel wells. While I was working on the wings, I added sway braces from copper wire to the underwing pylons, drilled out the recognition lights under the starboard wing, and added zero length rocket launcher stubs (except for those that needed to be added later once the Suez campaign recognition stripes had been painted) as fitted to many IAF Mustangs.

A file was used to open up the smaller, forward radiator door under the fuselage, and even though it can’t be seen very well on the finished model, the rear radiator face inside the large, rear door was scratchbuilt from etched mesh and styrene strips to help hide an internal seam. The tail and wingtip nav. lights were also removed to be replaced later on.

Once fully assembled, the spinner was painted yellow and masked, before painting the underside in Gunze Sangyo H417 (RLM76 Hellblau). Gunze acrylics are my paint of choice for airbrushing for ease of use and clean up. According to all IAF sources/references, the camouflage of the period for the P-51 was glossy and masked with hard edges. I used some artistic license and used paper masks for the upper surface colours to give a “hard feathered” edge. The tan is custom mixed to match period colours. My recipe is 25% White (H316) + 25% Dark Earth (H72) + 50% Khaki (H81). The blue is Gunze H326 (FS15044 – USAF Thunderbird Blue). The paint was sealed with Gunze clear gloss varnish before decalling.

Decals are from IsraDecals' "IAF7: IAF Mustangs", and includes the Hebrew stencilling and the fuselage and wing Suez campaign recognition stripes which all settled down nicely using Superscale setting solutions. Kit decals were used for the prop logos and fuel filler cap under the canopy.

Final touches included:

·                     tinted clear resin wingtip nav. lights from CMK

·                     5-minute clear epoxy (tinted where necessary with Gunze clear acrylics) for the underwing ID and tail nav. lights

·                     attaching stretched sprue radio wire and then canopy (tricky operation – sprue first glued to radio and then to the rear of the seat, passed through hole drilled in canopy, canopy glued in place and then sprue glued to the tail; finally, sprue tightened using hot knife blade, and small drop of white glue used to simulate insulator)

·                     added the last 4 underwing rocket stubs (the black coloured stubs) and pitot over the Suez stripes

·                     painting wheel wells (chromate yellow), gear legs (silver) and tires (tire black).

·                     weathering using Windsor and Newton oil paint wash, airbrushed thinned Gunze flat black for exhaust and gun stains, and chipped paint using fine brush and silver-grey paint (and LOTS of patience)

The model was sealed with a final coat of Gunze varnish.