I will be starting my next build later today. This is a kit that I have built many times in the past, although I have never built this particular boxing.
This is one of Steven Spielberg’s most criminally under-rated movies. I mean, how bad can a movie be if it has John freaking Belushi piloting a Flying Tiger? I love Belushi’s character and all of his scenes, I love John Williams’ score for the movie, heck, I even love Spielberg making fun of himself with that Jaws parody to open this one.
This is the same kit as a couple of more famous boxings:
I have built both of those, mostly the Flying Tiger version on multiple occasions. I have a photo from my youth where my parents gave me that Aleutian Tiger as a present for one reason or another, birthday possibly. No idea why I never built the 1941 boxing, maybe because I was losing interest in model building when the kit was released in favor of mundane things like girls and baseball.
I got this kit via an eBay seller. When I opened it up for the first time since receiving it, I inspected everything. The decals are in excellent shape. But I noticed a major issue with them. There are only two US roundels on the sheet, and they are of the wrong style; they are what we would have seen on US fighters in 1943 and later. In the movie, there are 6 roundels, just the circle with the stars and the red circle at the center of the star. As luck would not have it, I did not have any such spares in my decal stash, so I bought a Yellow Wings sheet for this build.
I plan to build this one wheels up and hang it from my workshop ceiling. I am considering the awful pilot figure that Revell used for all of their 32nd releases. I might very well use that figure, but I’ll add some white scrap material to represent Kelso’s scarf when he caught it in the canopy. Not totally on board with that right now, but it’s a good idea if I can pull it off.
Funny how the aircraft on the box art has entirely inappropriate “stars and bars”, while the aircraft in the movie has period correct markings (though too many). And why does it have the “shark-mouth” being an aircraft in the U.S.? Confusing movie!
Yeah, I was. I knew the kit existed from way back in 1979, but just had never gotten it back then. My interest was probably more for the box art, which I will keep to mount on one of the walls in my garage where I display old box tops (mostly Monogram but a few Tamiya and Revell in there).
I once built this kit, complete with a hand-done paint job, in roughly a couple of hours. That’s not going to be the case this time around. But, I did get a whole lot of the kit put together yesterday, to include all control surfaces, most of the engine, the cockpit, gear doors put into closed position, and the fuselage closed up.
At lunch just now, I mixed up some AK Interactive Real Colors interior yellow green with olive drab faded and a couple of drops of neutral grey to approximate Curtiss interior green. I didn’t quite get the right ratio, but since this build will go on the ceiling and is intended as a quick build, I am going with the mantra of “close enough is good enough”.
This kit also is a good example of the risk of buying via eBay (or I suppose any other place where one can get an old, OOP kit). One of the engine brackets was missing the forward connector, and one of the exhaust stack shrouds was not in the box. None of that is a show stopper, though.
I love Revell’s old generic pilot figure, too, who flew the planes of all nations! And how for the 1/48 b-25 Doolittle Raider, they just shrunk him down to 1/48.
The quality of Monogram’s figures by the late 60s was one of the things that made me like their kits better than Revell’s. I liked Revell, but I appreciated the Monogram kits better.
I’ve been away for a bit due to family stuff and work, but have been steadily making progress on this kit. The kit itself is not living up to my memories of having built it so many times in my distant past - lots of fit issues that when I was 10 simply didn’t faze me. This one is not going to be a museum piece; in fact, it never was intended as such. It’s really just a quick one to get me from one more complicated build to the next (an Italeri Short Stirling).
I haven’t kept up with photos, but I have a couple of additional pictures to add today. All of the primary parts are in place. I had painted the underside prior to adding the wing bottom, but quickly realized I would have to re-do much of that paint work due to the large gaps present in the typical areas for a vintage kit such as this. So today I dealt with all those gaps with first a layer of red glazing putty - let that cure and sand it smooth - then fill it some pock marks with basic Tamiya putty. That is now curing while the wife and I go see the new movie, Disclosure Day
I spent the morning / early afternoon completing all of the paint work, which was essentially two colors - faded olive drab and neutral grey. I used some AK masking putty to form the demarcation lines and keep neutral grey off the faded olive drab. Semi-gloss black and orange-yellow for the prop blades/tips, and hand-painted the tires with rubber black, exhaust stacks with burnt metal, and gear struts with matte aluminum.
The decals are a mish-mash. The shark mouth and eyes are from the kit. For 47-year-old decals, they performed flawlessly. Yellow Wings Decals US insignia is the source for the 6 roundels (not reality accurate but film accurate). Finally, there is a US ARMY stencil along the underside of the wing. I never could determine if that was present on the filming P-40, but since I had one in my spares box, I went ahead and used it.
No weathering of any kind, mostly because I never detected much on the P-40 while watching the movie recently.
The kit didn’t live up to expectations formed decades ago, but I suppose I should not have expected it to. It fought me in a few areas, but a copious amount of putty seems to have won that particular battle. I have two more of these in the stash, but have no plans to build either any time soon.
Next up is another RAF heavy bomber, Italeri’s 1/72 Short Stirling Mk. III.
I did give that a lot of thought. I also wanted to give him the scarf that he catches in the canopy when he closes it, but that was going to require reconfiguring his position into more of a leaning forward stance. That probably wouldn’t have worked given that pilot figure is a two-piece hollow figure, so nothing would have been available to reposition against (solid insides). Then I forgot about the stoagie.
Really cool build. Turned out good. Sorry to hear about the issues with the construction. (You can’t tell there’s any). A little putty, a little paint will make it look like something it ain’t!!
