Good looking little model. It's a shame about the nose art.
A funny story that is sort of related. My F-in-Law was a crew chief in the MTO in the 414 and owned one. His girlfriend, later my wife's mother, was a brunette. He had a picture of her reclining in one of those old fashioned bathing suits from the '40s that men would make a pass at on the hanger.
When she was painted on the nose, her dark hair made her look bald, so the artist made her a blonde!
There've been any number of 1/72 widows over the years. I think Airfix re released their 50 year old kit recently. A very nice one was released several years ago by Dragon/ DML. I've got two in the stash.
The aircraft wasn't in service for very long- mid 1944 to 1947. By 1945 there wasn't much in the sky left to shoot down. They were used quite a bit as fighter bombers.
I've got a LOT of photos of them. An interesting weathering feature of the black ones, at least in the MTO was that they had all of their open spaces between the movable control surfaces and the airframe taped up for the trip over on a ships deck.
When the tape was removed, it took a lot of black paint with it.
Fabulous aircraft, really nice model Grant.