Aaron ,
I have been doing quite a bit of kit-bashing and parts swapping on my F4U-5N Corsair "Night Fighters" ;
Italeri's F4U-5N kit is identical to the Revell F4U-5 offering , which are really not much different to the Italeri F4U-4B kit ;
Here is a comparision pic of Italeri's F4U-5N and F4U-4B sprue
The fuselage halves are the same , F4U-4B [blue] and F4U-5N [gray]
The only major difference is the 5N kit has wing cannons with flash muzzles , different weapons pylons , a radar radome but no bombs or missle's .
When I bought the High Planes F4U-5N kit , I discovered that there is no cockpit tub , console or control stick included ; So I went and bought Revell's F4U-5 kit originally just for those parts . However I changed my mind and ended up using almost 95% of the Revell kit and just grafted the High Planes front engine and cowl section [gray] to the revell fuselage [blue] .
This ment I had a spare [blue] engine cowl and front section left over , you can see in the pic below how I grafted the High Planes front section to the Revell fuselage .
The spare engine cowl and small front section [blue] that is left over is what I intend using on the new Italeri F4U-5N kit to extend the front fuselage to the correct length .
I hope this makes some sense , basically Italeri and Revell's F4U-5 fuselage halves aren't the correct length to start with , there the same as the F4U-4B fuselage halves . You need to extend them and add a filler strip to the center of the wing section as well .
I hope this helps , I usually struggle somewhat to explain things !
John .
BTW , I like your analogy on the Airfix PBY pilots , I suppose it's fitting they should look like penguin's seeing they are sitting in a flying boat .