1/72 Academy P-51C & Tamiya P-47 Razorback

Gallery Article by Raśl Corral on Sept 15 2009

 

Academy P-51C & Tamiya P-47 Razorback, out of the box in 1/72 scale. 

Here you go, after years and years modeling: my first P-51 Mustang. I chose Academy's kit as I was very interested in the famous USAAF Tuskagee Airmen. The boxart brought my attention straight away when I saw it, those red tails are lovely!

As I had to give the model a natural metal finish I decided to built and paint at the same time a P-47D Razorback, from Tamiya, so I could save time and painting working on both planes at the same time.

Academy's P-51C is really nice to build. I did not have any issues at all and everything went smoothly. The decals, "INA The Macon Belle", piloted by the US as Lt. Archer (302 FS) are a bit too thick, but thanks God we all have Micro Sol in our drawer, so the final results were not so bad.

Click on images below to see larger images

  

  

  

  

  

  

Photo 06

Tamiya's razorback in 1/72 is a jewel (for its quality but also for its price too!). The cockpit (picture 06) is the most perfect one I have ever seen in 1/72. I would say that it is even better than some of the aftermarket / resin cockpits! The fantastic decals of Lifelike Decals, Japan, reference 010, helped me definitely to bring this plastic kit "into life".

For painting I used Humbrols Metallic Chrome Silver (ref 191) and Metallic Silver (ref 11). Some washes in certain panels helped me to achieve some contrast among on a, in other case, boring NMF finish. Do not forget that almost 95% of these USAAF fighters did not show an immaculate metal finish like lots of people are thinking when building their P-51's and P-47's. 

For further details about the painting and weathering you can take a look into my homemade web www.webmodelismo.com (it is in Spanish, but with hundreds of step by step pictures) so you can see exactly how I finished these two beautiful American birds and also more of my P-47 collection... 

Raśl Corral

Click on images below to see larger images

  

  

  

Photos and text © by Raśl Corral