RAF P-38 / Lightning Mk XIV (finished)

[wingman777]

[wingman777]

Sod the Yanks AND their bloody turbo-superchargers.  We'll sort it out the English way... with Merlins.  I've covered the openings that would've held the superchargers with miliput and will sand them later.   The P-38 was smaller and lighter than the mythical "Mossie" and by deleting the superchargers and their additional piping and pieces the "Lightning" is made even lighter.  We could be looking at a real thoroughbred.

[wingman777]

[wingman777]

The twin boom pieces are glued together and it all fit rather well.  I filled the hollow radiator area with black foam so you can't see all the way through them.  

[wingman777]

[wingman777]

The cockpit is starting to shape up and even though it will be very basic I'm going to try and make it presentable.  Once the fuselage pieces are all glued in you won't be able to see much of it anyway.  It looks like the front portion of the P-38 canopy and the rear bubble of the Hasegawa P-51 are going to match up well.  Much better than the old P-38 framing.  The Brits put bubble tops on the Spit, Whirlwind, Fury, Tempest and Typhoon so it only makes sense that they would eventually do it to their Lightning if they had accepted it.  Please pardon the weird looking RAF interior green.  I was making good progress and discovered that my stash of paint had dried up, so I used the TLAR method "That Looks About Right" to cobble up my own home-made color...so shoot me.  No IPMS judges were harmed in the process, and they'll never see this model.  

[Shoggz]

I'm really, really enjoying both the build and your commentary - very entertaining! 

[DugyB]

16 hours ago, wingman777 said:

Good god man, what have you done … are you trying to start WW3?  

Edited April 22, 2024 by DugyB

[Oldbaldguy]

Being most intrigued in my dotage by the Anglican mindset concerning nearly anything mechanical, I did a little research of my own into this project.  There were several serious concerns expressed by the octagenerian lord high potentates who ran the Air Ministry when evaluating the P-38.  The first and greatest was whether anyone had thought to get council approval before building the  P-38 in the first place.  The majority of great thinkers in the AM - the same ones who had given the RAF such wizard combat aircraft as the Blowfly and mostly adequate Wildebeast - agreed that the Yanks likely had not since most Yanks are, in their opinions, of criminal decent, disrespectful of authority and of too independent a mind.  Of course, they were right on all counts and congratulated themselves heartily and often.  The AM’s second concern that truly was a spot of bother was whether each Lightning counted as one airplane or two.  If it were to be one, then they could convince the Exchequer that they were actually getting one over on the bloody Yanks (Haw, haw!  A haw haw! A haw!) by acquiring essentially two airplanes for the price of one. On the other hand, if they counted each Lightning as two or even one and a half airplanes, then they could inflate RAF end strength beyond all reason for very little money and make themselves look very good indeed.  That issue was never resolved because the committee eventually ran out of scotch.  The one flash of brilliance to come of all this was the conversion from Allison engines to the much vaunted and frankly much superior RR Merlin.  However, the great men of the AM were unable to contain themselves and insisted that both motors should turn in the correct English direction, which is opposite to that used by every other industrialized nation in the galaxy, because to employ engines that counter each other would be too much like a day on the floor of the House of Commons.  The result was that the Lightning XIV could never be made to fly right.  There were other bits and bobs that needed tweaking, the greatest of which was the insistence by the AM that only Lucas electrics would be used in the Lightning.  This kept airframe hours very low in service aircraft because they would rarely start and no one could ever find out why.  In the end, the P-38 was refused by the AM because it was too sturdy, flew too far, carried too many big guns and was too American.  They chose to continue development of the Gladiator instead because two wings are always better than two engines, whot?  The AM, did elect to keep the name Lightning, however, for use later should the English develop a twin engined fighter of their own in the future.  Sources, cites and footnotes available on request.

[wingman777]

I must say OBG, you are quite the wordsmith.  Hopefully I'll have a bit of progress on this build by end of day tomorrow.

[Oldbaldguy]

12 hours ago, wingman777 said:

I must say OBG, you are quite the wordsmith.  Hopefully I'll have a bit of progress on this build by end of day tomorrow.

Purely accidental, I assure you.  Really looking forward to seeing the thing finished.  It never occurred to me what might have been had Lockheed adapted the airplane for Merlins.  Some of these what-ifs are weirdly fun, but what you’re doing might actually have worked.

[wingman777]

I spent the last two months on completing the Revell F4U-1A, so now I'm back to this one.   Gentlemen, we are in uncharted waters.  This isn't fun and it isn't pretty.  I've thrown out the Revell instructions, I'm cutting first and taking measurements later.  I'm cutting plastic with total disregard, like Jason with a hot chainsaw.  These images are not for the squeamish Tamiya kit assembler.

[wingman777]

[wingman777]

Thats right sir, those parts were never meant to be together but we are shoe-horning them with sheet styrene, C/A, accelerator and pure grit

[wingman777]