After seeing photos of the 12th Fighter Bomber Squadron's F-51 Mustangs
in Korea, I was inspired to build one of the colorful shark mouth
'stangs. I discovered a few years ago that Tamiya's wonderful 1/48
Mustang was released as a 12th FBS F-51D. However, it was not marked
as the full color, blue and yellow schemes I had seen. Armed with
photos from International Air Power Review volume 6, and Dorr & Thompson's
Korean Air War book I set out to do my own decal option.
Click on
images below to see larger images
Tamiya's kit is well done and also well reviewed elsewhere. I kicked
my build up a notch with Eduard's color cockpit photo etch set, some
minor scratch built bits, and two full sets of kit issued decals; the
extra copy courtesy of another helpful modeler. With these, I was able
to piece together the buzz numbers on the fuselage and the serials on
the tail. The US Air Force decals came from the spares box. The numbers "6" are actually "9"'s turned
upside down, and the "8" is made up of two "3"'s
turned onto each other. Stuff like that.
The blue wingtips are Testors #1111 lightened with white, and the yellow
is Model Master Insignia yellow. This seems to be a good match with
color photos of 12th FBS F-51's. The one photo of 648 also shows the
uncuffed prop, so I used the one from the kit. The fuse retaining wire
for the rocket noses are short sections of 2 pound monofilament fishing
line painted copper. The exhausts and gun ports are drilled out.
The exhaust residue and tire dust is pastel chalks. I used a dark
gray sludge wash in the panel lines and rivets. The base is Eduard's
PSP painted with various shades of Alclad II and weathered with
sludge wash and pastels.
This is
one of those builds that was going to go all the way, but
in the end I made some executive decisions and shortened my intentions a bit. I wish I had done more.
Hope you enjoy what you see!
Rick (Spruemeister)
Click on
images below to see larger images
|