Alex

You're on a serious airliner roll! This is definitely a more obscure one, so fun to see, Airfix and all.

Mix of chromate primer and bare aluminum in the engine bay. Totally ignoring the ejector pin marks because you will never see them pressed up against the side of the engine. The actual color of the primer is more yellow - not as minty. It's MRP paint. The iPhone is distorting the color. Still need to paint some details and add a few wires and boxes for wires to terminate in. The outside: Also working on a rusty finish for the exhaust headers (which are just stubs that socket into the guard that covers the side of the cylinder head - although this is "less realistic" than full headers that connect into the head, it makes life a lot easier and I'm glad Tamiya did it). Once these are fully dried I'll wet them with brown enamel PLW to tone down the appearance a bit, and try to hit the bores with a tiny bit of black paint for shadow.

Thanks! The kit is overall so well made that I feel like I have to push my limited envelope to do justice to it...

All of the remaining bits needed to install the engine and button up the fuselage. At various points in the prime/paint process. Doing this is a royal PITA and I'm having to take breaks in between doing the individual hoses. Cutting and wrapping 0.3 mm strips of masking tape is challenging my vision and dexterity to the max. But the effect is much better than I could hope to achieve with freehand painting. Still a bunch more fiddly masking and painting to go before I'm ready to start test-fitting and assembling. We have a bitter cold weekend on tap in Boston (at least relative to local norms), so I'll probably hide inside and work on this the whole time. If I don't run into trouble I may be able to close the fuselage by the end of Sunday. That will feel like a significant milestone, I think.

That's a great effect, Kevin, and pretty much what I'm aiming for. I may not use the Airframe Aluminum because I'm hoping not to put any top coat over the metalizer if possible. It may be enough to prime the wings with gray Mr Surfacer 1200 and the fuselage with gloss black, then spray one metalizer (probably plain Alclad Aluminum) over it all. We'll see. I also need to subtly distinguish the fabric covered rudder with a third shade.

And some good info about the use of aluminum paint (rather than bare metal) on the wings. I'll need to do some experimenting to see which metalizer I want to use to provide a subtle but visible distinction between the wings and the truly bare aluminum surfaces. https://www.key.aero/forum/historic-aviation/141825-p51-mustang-wings-painted-or-not

Another good resource on Iwo Jima Mustang FGs http://506thfightergroup.org/index.asp

Another feature unique to Iwo Jima planes were the sway braces made on-site (out of plywood) to prevent excessive motion of the 110-gal. metal drop tanks that were required to provide the range the Mustang needed to reach the Japanese mainland and return. Unlike the other details specific to the IJ planes, these custom braces are not represented in the Tamiya "Pacific Theater" kit version. But they should be straightforward to make. Note also the apparent fabric boot on the top of the main gear leg. I need to look into this more. In addition to all this research, I have actually been working on the model too. Hopefully some sort of update on that later today.

Even more on the battery/radio question. I recently got another P-51 reference... One of the things that this book emphasizes (although parts of this info is in other pubs as well, obviously, is that the Block 20 and 25 Mustangs deployed in the Western Pacific were the most comprehensively equipped with electronics gear of any P-51s flown in WW2. Maybe the spiritual forebears of today's F-35? The Mustangs on Iwo Jima were equipped with a twin-antenna AN/ARA-8 homing transponder (note the two antennas on the dorsal spine, unique to the Iwo Jima planes) that allowed them to home to the B-29 flights originating from the Marianas that they were tasked with escorting. The usual mustang SCR-522 radio mast was relocated to underneath the fuselage, as seen above. In addition, these Mustangs were equipped with an SCR-695 IFF transponder to allow them to be recognized by friendly radar as they returned to Iwo Jima (and presumably by US Navy shipborne radars too, although I didn't see this explicitly stated). Cramming all this radio gear (which was big - this is still the age of vacuum tubes) into the fuselage meant that something had to give, and that was the battery. It was moved to the engine bay so that the SCR-695 transmitter could be placed on the rear deck where the battery sat in other Mustangs. Here's a diagram showing the Iwo Jima setup. Which I found here: https://iwojimamodels.com/2019/08/29/getting-it-right/ That page contains a nice description of the specific mods made to the Mustangs that flew from Iwo Jima. One additional photo from the Squadron book really evokes the brutal conditions endured by the Iwo Jima P-51 FGs. The whole island was covered in crushed coral gravel (especially after the massive shelling it received prior to the Marine landing to capture the island). So everything filled up with gritty coral dust that could never be fully cleaned away. The USAAF personnel, from senior officers down to privates, lived in tents pitched on the windswept, dusty plain - there were effectively no permanent structures built. In the early weeks, they were occasionally forced to deal with random Japanese holdouts assaulting these tent barracks at night.

Here's a couple shots of the Sakae 21 from my Zero Highly simplified R-1830 (to be viewed only from the front in a model without a removable cowl). I'll add some photos of the Packard Merlin from my Mustang when it's done...

Yes - you would have to want to take on a big scratch building project for this one. My worry is that I'm getting more interested in that kind of thing ;-). But this is also a huge model - 65 cm wingspan. I'd need a bigger house to start building stuff like that.

The photos of the sprues on the Hobby Boss website look very light on detail, which might be OK as long as there are not flaws in overall shape etc. http://www.hobbyboss.com/index.php?g=home&m=product&a=show&id=1569&l=en

Here's another great document for people who are obsessed with P-51 anatomy. Free on line, 300-pages on how to take one out of the shipping crate and assemble it. https://stephentaylorhistorian.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/p-51d-part-1.pdf

I know - I wish they would not do that. They add unnecessary complexity to these kits by insisting on engineering movable control surfaces, foldable landing gear, etc. It's a static display model, not a toy. I wish they would put that engineering effort towards even more and more accurate cockpit and engine detail instead.

In other news, the fuselage of my P-51D closes nicely around both cockpit and radiator ducting. Conveniently, it's possible to get the cockpit in, tape the top of the fuselage, and then slip the radiator assembly in from the front. That's good, because the way the ducting assembly fits makes it very tricky to actually close the fuselage halves around it. I didn't want to have to juggle both pieces and both halves of the fuselage at once if I could avoid it. Now I have to get to grips with finishing the engine bay detailing and confirming that it all closes around the engine correctly.

Here are a couple of photos from IMPS Stockholm of a restored (with creative paint scheme) P-51D (no block info) with the engine bay battery fitment.

Adding a little bit more - the Tamiya kit (which is specifically meant to be about PTO Mustangs) provides 3 schemes/variants. “A” and “C” are a P-51K and an F-6D recon plane respectively. They both have the battery behind the radio. “B” is a P-51D, 45 FS / 15 FG stationed on Iwo Jima at the end of the war. My Osprey book has an illustration of the same aircraft (46-3483) and says it is a block 20. All of the aircraft illustrated in the book (from 15, 21, 506 FGs) are either block 20 or 25 P-51Ds.

A little bit of additional digging (https://www.mustangsmustangs.net/p-51/variants/p51d) reveals that the inclusion of the K-14 gyro computing gunsight, which is also included only in the kit variant that has the relocated battery, began with the Block 20 P-51Ds, which started production in October 1944. So perhaps (but I haven’t found an explicit statement of this) the battery relocation happened with that block as well.

Hmm. No, I don’t and had wondered a bit about it. The kit instructions/parts give two possible placements, one behind the radio and one in the engine bay. Variant B in the instructions, which seems closest in time frame and deployed location to the subject I’m trying to do, has it in the engine bay. The USAAF parts manual reproduction that I just received (which is very useful in general) shows it in the engine bay as well. It is dated March 1945, so around or slightly before Mustangs were deployed to Iwo Jima to support the B-29 raids originating from fields in the Marianas. I also wasn’t aware that there was a 1/24 kit. I hope that it is fatally flawed in some way so that I’m not tempted to buy it... ;-)

It’s just what the kit provides. The Tamiya clear parts are very good - very clear and smooth. I applied the kit instrument decal on the back of the clear part, and then painted the back of that black to prevent light from shining through the instrument faces.

This looks great so far! Must be a fairly recent SH mold - that engine is slick.

Front office starting to come together. Just dry fit for now. Added the kit cockpit placard decals and a few extras from an Airscale set to match reference photos. As usual for Tamiya this is all a super-tight-tolerance click fit, so you have to be super careful that nothing you add from scratch in any way interferes, because there's no wiggle room at all. So far it seems to fit both sides, but I still need to check that the whole fuselage closes around it. That test also requires the radiator ducting assembly, which I finished and which also fits with zero room to spare. At some point tonight or tomorrow I will work up the courage to check if the fuselage closes around that and the cockpit... ;-) I also started to add in more plumbing and linkages between firewall and engine. Some of these need to be painted black still. Some of those will need to be teased into position to follow the engine bearers once the engine is in the closed fuselage. I need to get that all dry fit next and see how much of the additional hardware that runs along the outside of the engine bay I want to try to build. I know already that I'm not going to try and replicate Mark's amazing job on the propellor speed control linkage, one because I do not have the chops to do it, and two because there is no clearance between the port engine bearer and the water pump housing for it to fit. Even Tamiya's scale engineering isn't *perfect*. I also need to dry fit the battery box and its mount, which in this model Mustang sits in the engine bay between intercooler and oil tank. That's going to impact routing for plumbing, and also prevent great visibility to stuff underneath it (hence I may not put anything more there). We'll see. I want to leave no stone that I'm capable of building unturned here, but I can feel the point of diminishing returns approaching...

Thanks! I hope to have a significant update later today or tomorrow with the cockpit sides completed... Slow progress but (fingers crossed) stuff seems to be working.

Hmmm. I need to give this a whirl. I've always just relied on just the capillary wicking method alone, and maybe I'm not getting the optimal amount of glue into these joints. Bottom line is that anything Chuck does, I at least need to try, because it clearly produces great results!

Wow, yes. I am going to waste a bunch of time looking through that...