Help identifying a P-51D kit

Stinger:

Sounds like the old Hawk kit to me. It was originally released in the early 60's chrome plated except for tires, prop blades, exhaust stacks,cockpit parts, drop tanks and rocket tubes, which were molded in black. Later the kit was re-released without the chrome plating - just bare silver plastic. If that is what you are thinking of, I believe it is still available under the Testors label.

Jim

Jim - You are right on!! It was a Hawk kit. I thought something was wrong when I said Airfix. I'll look around for it under the Testors label. Thanks so much! Dennis (stinger)

Dennis:

During the 60's and 70's I built enough of the Hawk P-51's and P-47's to equip two or three squadrons. The original chrome-plated Mustang release had some very colorful Philippine markings, and a later release had Israeli markings - I did both. I remember how stoked I was when Hawk broght out their P-47 - 1/48th that could be built as a RAZORBACK !

Jim

I built several of those Mustaings myself; still have a couple lurking in the basement. I also built the T-bolt, the Lysander and the OV-10. Neat kits at the time.

This also was released as a Italeri / Testors kit with 'TANGERINE' noseart , i've one here and spoke to blackwolf about it yesterday, it has the black sprue and a dark blue for the rest, strangley surfaces have a varing gloss and matt finish to the panels, maybe the earlier chrome had something to do with this ?

Migs:

I think you are right about the chrome - the varying surface finishes on the plastic may have been done to make some of the panels look different once the chrome was applied.

Jim

How were those old 'chrome' plated kits? decent to build today? i have a chance to purchase one, but i'm unsure of it, never seen anything like it, but sounds nice.....a heck of a nice alternative to bare metal foil if it's worth it!

brian

I found and bought the P-51 I was looking for, thanks to the info from this great forum. In fact, I bought two of them, and two of the P-47's of the same production. Now I need some info about invasion stripes. The one I built decades ago had the stripes painted on the bottom AND the top of the wings. All of the photos I've ever seen of P-51's show invasion stripes on the bottom only. Anyone out there know of a Mustang with stripes on the top of the wings?

Waltz - None of the kits that I bought recently were chrome plated. I purposely avoided them because they seemed to me to be rather cheesy. I think one can obtain more realistic results using metalizers and bare chrome, but I've never really seen one built to say for sure how good or bad they are. They're out there for relatively cheap on eBay though, and it would interesting to see how they really look. If I get one I'll let you know, or let us know if you do likewise.

Dennis:

Invasion stripes went thru several stages:

Stripes on top and bottom of fuselage and wings
Stripes removed or painted over tops of fuselage and wings
Stripes removed or painted over underside of wings, leaving only fuselage stripes
Stripes elimiated from fuselage

Invasion stripes were first applied to aircraft on the night of 6/5/44 in preparation for the invasion the next morning. Don't have my references handy, so don't have the time frames for the subsequent changes. New aircraft coming out of depots had the stipes applied to conform to the current policy, so there were aircraft that had partial or no stripes that never did have the full stripes.

Waltz:

2 major drawbacks that I remember from building the chrome plated P-51 and P-47:

1. having to remove plating from glue joint surfaces
2. coudn't fill and sand seams without screwing up plating

Jim

hey guys,
thanks, i think i may get one cheap and just see what's it like, i'll have to let you know how it turns out. i figured as much as no sanding and glue possible problems, but we'll see...just have to be extra careful.

brian

Thanks jguignard - I had heard that the stripes were sort of a last minute idea for IFF purposes during the D-Day invasion, and that many aircraft were painted (sometimes rather crudely) in the field. I read a short article on this recently, but can't remeber where. Do you know of any books or websites that might show some examples?

Waltz - let us know how it turns out. I would think that it may be one of those kit builds where you just build it straight from the box, without worrying about gaps at the wing/fuselage and other areas. I see from previous replies that the chrome has diferent textures to it and am curious about how that really looks.

Thanks again guys. Stinger

FSM had an article recently on that subject..I believe by Dana Bell...I remember the stripes were 2 ft wide (individual stripes that is)..it the one with the article on the Typhoon and its ID stripes.

Thanks Tcap - I look through my past issues for it.

If I were you I wouldn't seek out a plated Hawk kit for an accurate build. You do have to scrape the seams and they are impossible to hide without destroying the plating in those areas. Quite often the plating has dulled with oxidation. I have a couple of the plated kits and I don't think the panel effect looks very realistic.

There is a discussion on invasion stripes here: http://www.finescale.com/fsm/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2729&SearchTerms=invasion,stripes
The underwing stripes on the Typhoons were a squadron marking NOT invasion stripes and as such vary in size and location from invasion stripes.