1/48 Academy P-47N |
|
Gallery
Article by Graham Tarran |
|
|
Republic P47N “Expected Goose”463rd FS, 503rd FG Le Shima 1945
Here’s the Academy P47N. This was my first Academy P47, being a devotee of the
Hasegawa offerings but my inspiration for tackling this model came from a superb
article & build in a recent SAMI article (Nov 2001) by Nicholas Wigman.
In this article he used the Aires engine, gun bay & cockpit sets.
I didn’t feel competent with the engine set & couldn’t find the
gun bay set but got hold of the cockpit set & got to work.
The cockpits are a let down in both the Hasegawa & Academy kits being
a bit sparse. However there’s not
a fantastic amount that can be seen through the opening, even with an open
canopy. The Aires set goes together
& fits well. The only snag (as
the SAMI article pointed out) is the lack of a positive location for the
instrument panel.
The kit engine looks good with careful painting &
dry brushing. The Academy kit
offers two open gun bays & I opted to leave one open, securing the loose
panel to the wing surface with a little blue tack.
I painted the cockpit interior “US interior green”
with the gun bay & wheel wells “zinc chromate”. With hindsight, I suspect that the cowling interior should
also be “ZC” but sprayed it “interior green”.
Gun barrels were carefully drilled out.
Click on
images below to see larger images
|
|
Wing stripes & the entire tail unit are insignia
yellow, anti-gale panel is olive drab.
The Academy P47N & D kits come with a wealth of
under wing stores. As these
aircraft were involved in long-range escort duties for B29’s, I went with a
load of two large under wing tanks (designed for the P38 & I believe it was
the RAF in Burma that first used them on the P47) with a smaller fuselage
mounted drop tank. The rest of the
stores (bombs, rockets, bazooka tubes) are a welcome addition to the spares box.
The yellow areas & anti glare panel were sprayed
first, followed by Alclad II white aluminium over all with a few panels picked
out in dark aluminium. Decals are
by Aeromaster (sheet 48-067). Stencils
are from the kit sheet, as Aeromaster don’t include any on theirs.
I had a bad experience using Academy decals on another of their offering
so always try & use an aftermarket sheet now.
After application, the whole kit was given a light gloss coat to seal
everything down.