Lifelike Decals

1/72 P-47D Thunderbolt Part 4 decal sheet

Decal sheet product # 72-011

Review by Steve Bamford on Jan 20 2009

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This latest release from Lifelike Decals decal sheet features three different P-47D's.  This is Part 4 of  a series dealing with the P-47D's.  The P-47D is one of the most famous US built fighters of WW2.  The Thunderbolt was a classic American design.....take a big engine....and build a plane around it and load the wings up with big machine guns.

This decal sheet provides a good variety artwork and markings as you can see in the instruction sheets.

Each plane has some sort of nose art or text or huge amounts of kill markings for a certain famous ace.

The first plane is a P-47D-30-RA bubbletop, serial #44-33250 flown by Lt. Earl Kielgass of 396 FS, 368 FG from Chievres/Belgium in November 1944.  This aircraft has noseart of an Arozona desert scene with the text "Arizona Loraine".  This plane is overall silver with a yellow nose and as well as the top of the rear fuselage and the top of the tail.  The yellow paint on the nose extend back to a yellow lighting bolt on the side of the fuselage.  Black code letters/numbers on the rear fuselage are "C2 L".

The prop blades are black with yellow tips and a silver prop hub.  The landing gear doors are white.  There are black stripes on the tail and rear horizontal flying surfaces (stripes provided as decals).  

The second plane is a P-47D-30-RA bubbletop, serial #44-33250 flown by Lt. Rpbert Ward of the 367FS, 358FG in March 1944 from Toul France.  This aircraft has nose art text of "Ole Trapper IV" on the side of the fuselage below the canopy.  This plane is overall silver with an orange engine cowling ring and tail.  This aircraft has 15 kill markings....one of which appears to be a locomotive.  Black code letters/numbers on the rear fuselage are "CP R".  

The Third plane is a P-47M bubbletop, serial #44-21125 flown by Col. David Schilling of the 56FG in Jan 1945 from Boxted.  This aircraft has 33.5 kill markings.  This plane is 2 colour camo of dark green and gray on the top of the fuselage.  The prop blades are black with yellow tips and the wheel hubs are yellow as is the rudder on the tail.  The forward engine cowling ring is red. 

Click on images below to see larger images

  

  

The quality of these decals is of good quality although the tiny 1/72 stencils were not as clear as I usually see from Lifelike Decals, so I would suggest not using the stencils on this decal sheet.  The colour of the decals appears solid enough to prevent paint showing through the decals.  Some decals (such as the noseart decals) come in 2 layers to ensure good coverage.  

You can purchase these decals either directly from Lifelike Decals at fax number is +81-3-5680-6733, and e-mail is lifelike@eos.ocn.ne.jp. or from HobbyLink Japan.    

Other shops that stock Life like Decals are *Hannants/UK, *Mister Kit/Italy, *Revi (publisher)/Czech Republic, *SkyGrid/Canada, *Roll Models/USA, *Great Models Webstore/USA, *FlightDecs/Canada, *Victory Models/USA
*M & Models/USA, *
Zed Hobbies/Australia, *AB &S Enterprise/Australia, *Desert Miniature/USA 

I highly recommend these decals to anyone interested in P-47s. 

Steve

I would like to thank Lifelike Decals for providing me with this review sample.

Photos and text © by Steve Bamford