Well, after a bit of a holiday layoff from the bench, I have some progress to share. First, thanks to bvallot, Tug and all for the advice about masking insignia marks. Very instructive and helpful. I had already laid down the decals prior to seeing all the good information posted, but it will certainly be used in a future build.
So, as mentioned above, I placed the main decals (insignias, nose art, id numbers & letters) and gave everything a protective coat of Alclad Aqua Gloss. This was my first time using the Aqua Gloss, and I was pleased with both its ease of use, and appearance. The care I took in spacing the stripes on the tail paid off when it came time to place the ID number decal (which only shows the sections of the numbers not covered by the stripes.) Overall, I was happy with the Eagle Strike decals (printed by Cartograf), however I did have some issues with tiny wrinkles in the stars & bars. I got most of them out, but am even more motivated to paint my next build's insignias. The smaller decals all behaved very nicely.
Unfortunately, I neglected to snap any progress pictures before giving the plane a thorough bath in Flory Dark Dirt wash (Flory Black on the anti-reflective nose panel):
After letting the wash dry, I removed it with moist paper towels until I got the look that I wanted. Once satisfied, I applied the stencils from the Tamiya kit decal sheet. When I built the P-47, I applied the wash after the stencils, but found that rubbing off the wash removed some of the small stencil decals (even with a coating of Alclad Light Sheen to protect them.)
Once the decals had time to set, I started the weathering process with some light use of MIG pigments (mostly black smoke to start the build up of exhaust from the cannons and ejection ports). Once again, my photos have combined these two steps:
The Flory wash does a nice job of bringing out the panel line detail, and is very simple to use. By varying how much of the surface wash to remove, you can change how showroom clean the model looks. All of it is completely water soluble, and can be removed at any point (until clear coating locks it in).
I plan on dirtying up the underside with some oil paint to add a handful of fluid leaks. Here is a picture to document the "before":
I also plan some light oil washes to add some subtle streaking to the wing surfaces. Once that is done, I will give everything another coat of the Aqua Gloss to lock in the washes and seal down the decals. I am toying with another weathering step after that, but am undecided. I don't want to over do the weathering without decent reference photos of Captain Voll's ship, but I figure that he couldn't have racked up 21 kills without some wear and tear. I also want to try out some techniques that are new to me, so we'll see how that works out.
Other than all that... I am continuously impressed and inspired by the work people are sharing here. Great stuff.