Academy 1/72 P-39

Academy 1/72 P-39 Airacobra
Reviewed By John R. Lee, #11172

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Kit #FA216/#2223 M.S.R.P $10.00 Model Rectifier Corporation As this kit is the Russian Ace’ decal variant we won’t talk about the use made by the US and other allies. When we sent the P-39 to Russia they were very happy with its low-level performance. Twenty six hundred and eighty nine P-39s were sent to Russia via the Seattle/Alaska route with 34 aircraft being lost along the way. WASPs made many of the flights from the Buffalo to Seattle with Army pilots taking over for the flight to Alaska and turning them over to Russian pilots. A farther twenty two hundred and thirty Five were sent via ship with 103 aircraft being lost for a total of 4789 P-39s that made it to Russia. This kit is the re-release from I believe mid 1998. The kit is molded in medium gray plastic and has fifty-three gray and five clear parts. The kit has fully engraved panel lines, highly detailed cockpit interior and landing gear and offers three late WWII decal schemes. With the price at a low $10.00 you can go out and get several if you like the P-39.

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The left door is separate and molded in clear. This also has a raised section to represent the throttle quadrant that on the real aircraft was on the wall in front of the door that projected into the doorway and was a real knee knocker so that most pilots entered from the right side. I removed this and made up a throttle quadrant from card stock and added a map?? case on the right door also from card stock. I painted the model following the instructions using Model Master paints except for the underside I used Polly S Neutral Gray. I added a large chunk of lead over the nose wheel to keep it on its nose gear. I took a 1/48^th-scale instrument panel and reduced it to 1/72^nd and glued it to the kit panel. The location for the twin .50s is indicated by a solid outline on the nose. I drilled these out and superglued in .040Ų OD x .025Ų ID tubing to represent the blast tubes and will use .025Ų OD x .010Ų ID tubing for the gun barrels painted Model Master gun metal. I then glued the cockpit into one fuselage half. When dry I put the nose gear retraction strut into one side and then glued the fuselage halves together with TenaX-7R making sure the other side of the retraction strut was in its little hole on the other side. I then pushed it into the wheelwell and held it in place with a piece of tissue to keep it from breaking off as work proceeded on the model. I skipped the propeller, as I like to add them last. The fit was very good with the panel lines matching up on each side. I added the cross bar seen in pictures to the air intake for a better look.

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On to step 3 and the wings. I drilled out the four holes for the under wing guns, put in the landing light lens and glued the tops to the bottom. Step 4 is the assembly of the wings to the fuselage that required a little sanding to reduce the wing fairings to maintain the wing dihedral. Next came the tail planes with a good fit. Step 5 is adding the canopy parts that I had dipped in Future floor wax.. I then covered the canopy with Tamiya tape in preparation for painting. The rear canopy portion was a little long as it went into to carb intake. I had to sand a little off the front to make it fit better. I them stuffed wet tissue in into the cockpit and painted the underside Neutral Gray along with the other underside parts i.e. doors, gun pods and fuel tank. I let that dry for a day and masked the underside and painted the top Olive Green. Next the masking came off and I shot a few coats of Model Master clear on in preparation for the decals. There are three decal options are for Russian Aces. 1 P-39N of Col. A.I. Pokryshkin, co 9 Gv. IAD, 1944 2 P-39N of Maj. sultan Amet-Khan, 9 Gv. IAP, 1943 3 P-39Q of Capt. G.A. Rechkalov, 16 Gv. IAP, summer 1944 Number three is the one I chose to make as it is the only one with the underwing guns and the red stars on a blue background in four places peaked my interest. The decals looked great and the red stars of the kill markings lined up perfectly with the separate white backing. I removed the white backing from five of the stars at the bottom of his scoreboard to represent the five shared kills as seen on page seventy-three of the Osprey book. I had to use a lot of Micro Sol though to get the decals to snuggle down into the panel lines. A coat of gloss clear and I was ready to try a technique that was new to me. The art of applying “Sludge” (Water, dish soap and acrylic paint in the ratio of 5-3-2) to panel lines that has been written up several times in magazines and we had a demonstration at one of our club meetings and I thought it looks pretty good for the first try. Them on went a final coat of Model Master flat and off came the canopy masking. I then added all the small parts i.e. doors, undercarriage, antennas and propeller. All in all a nice well fitting kit with only very minor problems. I used filler only on the underside rear of the wing to fuselage join. As with most kits there is scope to add a bit of “Super Detailing” if you want. Recommended to all modelers. This kit is available through most fine hobby shops and various mail order companies. References: Mushroom Model Publication “Bell P-39 Airacobra” Osprey Aircraft of the Aces #15 “Soviet Aces of World War 2” America's Hundred-Thousand from Shiffer Publishing And for those with Internet capabilities: For Russian stuff http://vvs.hobbyvista.com And the P-39: http://vvs.hobbyvista.com/Markings/P39/color_mark_1.htm l Many thanks to IPMS/USA, John Noack and Greg Boggins from Model Rectifier Corporation 80 Newfield Avenue, Edison, New Jersey 08837-3817 USA for the kit, a great addition to my model shelf.
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