Gonna tackle the beautiful "Princess Pat"

So here I find myself staring at a 1/48 P-47 “Razorback”, begging to be built. One of the kits that I had acquired while killing time in S Korea… Its got a little (ok, a lot) of sentiment to me as one of those works of aviation art saved my grandfathers life back toward the end of WWII. My father shared the story and some photos with me a few years ago while on one of my many treks through the Colorado Rocky Mountains. He was going on about how after some time of searching that he was finally able to track down the pilot, LT Charles Reed, although he had passed a mere months before pops found him, he contacted his grand daughter… Anyway, long story short, my dad planned on building one in about 1/3 scale, as a radio controlled model. I was stoked. I always loved watching my fathers planes come together, the pride he felt in the model and how he would spend hours testing and checking all of the electronics before he would take them out to the field for a few hours of flight.

Fast forward a year or two, he was never able to build it before he himself passed away. That’s when I decided that I was going to build it for him… In smaller scale of course. I have obtained all of the marking info for this particular bird and as I said, the 48 scale “D” variant, along with several black and white (including one color of the jug art) pics. That’s where I hope you guys can help. The interior will be a snap, but I cant find any info on particular colors of the Fighter Wing that LT Reed flew with… Um… Help? Sooo, if any of you guys could lend a colorful hand, I would be most very grateful. I mean, like Very, Very grateful.

I will be posting lots of pictures of this build… Including the starting point… As soon as I figure out how to imbed a photo into a thread without the URL link to a different website…

This shouldn’t be too bad, as Lt. Charles Reed was a member of the 56th FG. They’re well documented.

You can find a few shots of him at this site:

http://www.littlefriends.co.uk/gallery.php?Group=56&Style=searchItem&Item=75&searchString=63rd%20Fighter%20Squadron

There is one of UN-X in a crash landing, serial 16367.

42-75185 UN-X was also “Princess Pat”.

It’s more than likely Lt. Reed flew more than one P-47 UN-X. I suppose you are sure it was 42-75185? Might check the date of the crash versus when the incident with your grandfather occurred.

The 56th FG website should answer a few questions.

Gary

PS> Did a search for “Reed” on that site. Apparently 16367 crashed in December of '43 (odd coincidence that it’s the 70th anniversary). Let’s see if this will bring up the search results…

http://www.littlefriends.co.uk/search.php?searchString=reed&Submit=Search

Thanks for the links Gary, its going to be fun doing more research on the group. By the way, do you know how to put a photo in the thread? You can message me so its not a part of the thread… Ya know, not taking away from the topic and all…