Jump to content

P-51D 47th FS / 15th FG, Iwo Jima 1945 [TAM 1:32] - DONE


Alex

Recommended Posts

12 hours ago, Gazzas said:

Jeepers that looks nice!

 

8 hours ago, dennismcc said:

That looks really lifelike.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

 

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Front office starting to come together.  Just dry fit for now.

pmTrM1zkj

pnmNawuXj

poGhq7oLj

poJWLOP4j

poCTqgJEj

 

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.

poYp77tHj

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. 

 

pm3Y3cIqj  

 

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...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 1/16/2021 at 8:57 PM, Alex said:

After a frustrating week of being too busy with work to do much, I was able to put in some time today (and it's a long weekend in the States, in honor of Dr. King, so more time to work tomorrow and Monday).  

 

IP and gunsight.

 

pmwV6TWzj

 

Most of the center part of the cockpit.  It still needs to be flat-coated and hit with some additional weathering.  But I want to wait to have the cockpit sides, which get built directly on the fuselage sides, completed first so I can be sure to get the level of weathering consistent.

 

po7huzzCj

 

pmPKnUP8j

 

I used RB Productions seat belts - quite a nice accessory, and easy to build.  The instructions had a useful suggestion to use a "glue stick" poster adhesive stick to glue them together rather than CA or PVA.  Worked great.

What did you use to do the glass on the Ip? That is some of the best I’ve seen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

54 minutes ago, themongoose said:

What did you use to do the glass on the Ip? That is some of the best I’ve seen

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Great show.

 

''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.'

The Trumpeter 1/24 P-51D has this configuration, also.  Do you/does anyone know when this started during production?

 

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Mark

Edited by dodgem37
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, dodgem37 said:

Great show.

 

''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.'

The Trumpeter 1/24 P-51D has this configuration, also.  Do you/does anyone know when this started during production?

 

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Mark

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... ;-)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, dodgem37 said:

Great show.

 

''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.'

The Trumpeter 1/24 P-51D has this configuration, also.  Do you/does anyone know when this started during production?

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

polUqgLYj

 

Now I have to get to grips with finishing the engine bay detailing and confirming that it all closes around the engine correctly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good show.  Thank you for your research.  About the Trumpeter 1/24 Mustang.  It's both good and accurate, and bad and not accurate, well detailed and poorly detailed, has it's detractors, and it's advocates. but can be built up nicely.  It just comes down to whether you can live with, or correct, what's wrong with it.

 

01.jpg

https://www.largescaleplanes.com/articles/article.php?aid=525

 

I see from looking thu this article the battery is not in the engine bay, but some other device is.  My memory . . .

 

Another:

NB2-3-08.jpg

https://www.largescaleplanes.com/articles/article.php?aid=816

 

Sincerely,

Mark

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Even more on the battery/radio question.  I recently got another P-51 reference...

poU0c6S9j

 

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?

 

pnex4aBnj

 

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.

po0iVxxJj

 

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.

 

pnp0ExGWj

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...