1/48 Airfix P-40 B 15th Pursuit Group "Pearl Harbor George Welch" (In progress and finished)
I thought I'd share part 2 of of my Pearl Harbor tandem build. About 6 or 7 years ago I wanted to do one of the P-40s that got airborne during the attack on Pearl Harbor. At that time I went with #160, flown by George Welch from Haleiwa Field on December 7, 1941. For those unfamiliar, Welch and another pilot, 2nd Lt. Kenneth Taylor, both still clad in tuxedos from an event the previous evening, got airborne and scores kills on the invading Japanese forces. Welch initially took off with only 30 cal ammo in the wing guns and claimed two Val dive bombers. After reloading, he got another Val and a Zero fighter. Both men would be awarded the Distinguished flying Cross for their heroism. Anyways, I digress, at that time, I spliced a Hobbycraft/Academy and Monogram P-40 B together to make a "reasonably" accurate model. I found it an underwhelming project and yearned for the day a decent B kit would be available. Fast forward to now where we now have the Airfix kit. It's not perfect but it's quite good. I decided to give Ole 160 another go with this new kit.
Good old 160..
The cockpit was done out of the box. It's quite good as-is in my opinion. The seat was poor, so I replaced it with a Hasegawa E part. I added Eduard seatbelts I had in the stash and Airscale decals for the IP dials. Of course I found out later that these likely only had lap belts. Opps...
The airframe goes together nicely. The only issues are the goofy cowl panel inserts that dont fit very well and weirdly converge at the nose. I'm not sure the reasoning behind this. I did replace the nose fifties with brass tubing.
I used a mix of AK Real Colors Olive Drab 41 and Faded Olive Drab. I didn't want to go crazy with it as I suspected these were in fairly good condition.
I followed suit with the Neutral Grey, also AK.
I used Montex masks to paint on the insignias.
I dirtied up the underside a bit with some post shading.
That's about it. I did add Ultracast wheels, Quickboost guns for the wings, and Eduard PE gun sights. I'm pretty happy with this turkey and I'm glad I was able to finally honor these brave men appropriately. The next time I will do Kenneth Taylor's #155.
