1:48 P-39 Aircobra

An engine behind the pilot's back

Bell built the fighter around a weapon. In the middle of the fuselage, behind the seat, lay an Allison twelve-cylinder engine, and a long shaft ran forward under the cockpit floor to a reduction gear whose axis was pierced by the barrel of a 37 mm cannon. The freed nose received nose-wheel landing gear, at that time still a novelty. Without a turbosupercharger, though, output fell away quickly at altitude, so the British refused the type and the machines traveled east. Soviet pilots committed them in the band where the engine worked best and achieved a score with them that nobody else repeated with an American fighter.

A cockpit you get into as if into a car

Nothing here corresponds to the usual scheme. There is no sliding or hinged canopy, because the roof of the cockpit is fixed and carries only a small escape hatch. The pilot got in through a door at the side; each had its own handle and a window wound down with a crank just as in a car. The windscreen consists of flat panes with an inserted armored plate, and behind the pilot's head the glazing of the spine continues to the rear. There are therefore more parting lines here than on a comparable fighter, and they lie in places where a modeler does not expect them.

Contents

• masking films for the glazing, separately for the outer and for the reverse face
• one sheet of masks for spraying the national insignia
• supplementary decals

The reverse face is worth masking here even with the cockpit closed. Through the side windows the pilot's space can be seen from both sides at once. The die-cut shape moreover follows the curve of the door, which cannot be imitated with tape without creases, and it keeps the same width along the whole length of the gap.