Academy

Kit Number 2209

1/72 P-38J Lightning (Pacific Theater)

Reviewed By Joe Hegedus, #33868

Academy's new P-38 is cleanly molded in medium gray and clear plastic, with crisply engraved surface detailing.  The parts are arranged on four gray trees and one clear tree, and are packed in plastic bags.  The clear tree is bagged separately to protect the parts from scratches.

The instructions are clear and adequately explain the options available to the modeler.  Several photos of subassemblies are helpful in getting things aligned properly.

The kit provides parts to build an early P-38J, before the under wing compressibility flaps were added.  Options in the kit include open or closed canopy, extended boarding ladder, and a choice of 1000 lb bombs or under wing fuel tanks.  A pair of 3-tube “bazooka” style rocket launchers is included, but there are no "Christmas Tree" launchers for under wing 5-inch HVARs included - I think these were a feature of the later versions.

Overall, this kit was a pleasure to build.  The cockpit detail is acceptable, with separate sidewalls, seat, and instrument panel.  The control column is molded with a separate wheel.  The instrument panel is represented by raised dial detail, and decals are provided for the instrument detail also.  No seat belts are included, either molded on or as decals.  You're on your own here.

The wheel wells and landing gear have good detail for the scale, with fully enclosed wells and piping to add to the main wells.  Use care in aligning the main landing gear as the forward brace doesn't provide a positive location to set the rake of the gear.

Overall, assembly was straightforward.  There were no major fit problems and I only needed a touch of filler where the wing joins the right boom aft of the trailing edge; I think this was my fault though. There is one point to mention:  Parts D14 and D15 seem to be reversed in the instructions.  The fit of these parts was better when they were assembled opposite the instructions (D14 where it says put D15 and vice-versa).  Lightning models are, as a rule, severe tail-sitters.  A fair amount of weight is required. I packed the forward end of each boom with lead shot, ahead of the wheel wells.  This was plenty to keep the nose down without having to put anything in the fuselage-a nice thing to know if one desires to open and detail the gun bay (again, you're on your own for now as the kit doesn't provide anything for this area).

Markings are provided for 2 different airplanes from the Pacific Theater, both in the olive drab over neutral gray scheme with green trim from the 80 FS/8 FG.  The decals were mostly well printed, except for the nose art for both options-the artwork was poorly done with no detail for facial features, just pinkish blobs where the faces should be.  A supplemental decal sheet was also included with additional green trim for the fins.  Since the nose art was poor, I used an old Microscale P-38 sheet to model an 8th AF machine instead; I like invasion stripes.  I used the kit decals for the stencils and national insignia; they responded well to Superset and Supersol, but the white of the national insignia was slightly translucent which is noticeable over the wing invasion stripes.  A pair of self-adhesive foil ovals is also included for the reflective panels on the inside of each boom.

In conclusion, this is a very good quality kit from Academy.  It's nice to have a P-38 kit that actually fits together well.  It'd be nice if they followed this with a few other versions.  Thanks to Academy for providing the review sample.  Keep up the good work!

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