I’m about to start this kit for the mob, and was hoping to learn a bit about the plane I’m going to represent. I’m going to use the “North Africa” markings. I wanted a better idea of what shade of green to use on the spinner. The first thing Google turned up was a 2 year old post from England from someone who learned that he 51st fighter group did not use P-39’s. Following links and my own searches turned up the following information:
The P-39 as represented probably belonged to the 15th Fighter Group out of Panama in the summer of 1943. American planes in North Africa had red spinners.
Has anyone done any further or deeper digging into this?
Yes, I did some digging on P-39s a few years back. The North Africa scheme was incorrect and was like you said, something for Panama Canal defense. While green has been a Squadron color all back thru AAF, AAC, and USAF history pretty much, it was not much of a spinner color. Most likely it would have been OD. Red was the theater ID color for the MTO, White in the ETO (until about mid 1944, when various squadron and group colors began to flourish), and various colors in CBI & PTO. Which boxing of the P-39kit do you have?
Ah ok, the most recent release of the kit I think. I might suggest googling the serial number of the aircraft to see what you might turn up, both in images and information.
So that sounds like training since it was stateside. I don’t think too many fighters were sent home from combat zones. The pipeline was pretty much one way and aircraft used up then stripped for spares or sent off to other units or air forces using that type.
Thanks, guys. Reasoned, that is the plane depicted in the kit. I notice that the profile doesn’t have a tail code. I’m leaning toward trusting the profile over the instructions and omitting them, too.
Revell or Monogram has some quality control issues concerning the artwork of the decals. I don’t have the kit nor its instructions, but this was taken from the decal and markings info from this kit review.
Decals are said in the review to represent the following aircraft. From the earlier comments on this thread, I believe that Revell made the mistakes and not the reviewer.
P-39D-2, 51st FG, North Africa 1943 in olive drab over neutral gray.
P-39Q, “Devastating Devil”, 49th FS/15th FG, Canton Island, 1943 in Sand over Duck Egg Blue.
P-400, “Hell’s Bells”, 347th FS/67th FG, Guadalcanal 1942, medium green and brown camouflage over light gray.
The Sand over “Light Blue” P-39Q ‘Devastating Devil’ belonged to the 46th FS, 15th FG, based on Canton Island in the Central Pacific. The Group was assigned to the 7th AF based in Hawaii. Apparently 46th was misprinted as 49th.
The 51st FG P-39D-2 is probably meant to be from the 81st FG, which did fly P-39s in North Africa. It could be from the 350th FG or the 68TH OG. The 31st FG did fly the P-39s from England for a short while before converting to Spitfires.
Well, if you look closely and blow that pic larger you’ll see that the tail code is very faintly there…at least a “17**4?” That is the crate I was also going to build, I kind of like the “bright” green spinner (regardless of the historical accuracy).
I like the green spinner, too. Which cannon are you going to mount? The instructions say 20mm, but I have a reference book that says that 41-7031 was part of a batch of P-39D’s that mounted the 37mm.
My reference is American Fighters of World War Two Vol. 1 by Doubleday in 1971.
I’ve followed Stikpusher’s advice and poked around using the serial #. It appears that 41-7031 was in 2 accidents; a takeoff accident on Jan 5th in Panama, and a landing accident in North Carolina on Aug 7th.
In Panama it was with the 30th Fighter Sqn, and in August it was part of the 152 Recon Sqn out of Camp Campell KY.
