1:48 P-51 Mustang-D (2 sheets, wet decals)

The escort fighter over Germany

The Mustang changed the face of the air war the moment it received a British engine and drop tanks. All at once it could escort the bomber formations all the way to the target and back, a task that no fighter had been equal to until then. Machines with striking checkerboards on their engine cowlings and colored stripes on the tail became a symbol of the Eighth Air Force, and the pilots guarded their personal emblems as jealously as their victory scores.

Nine machines on two sheets

The package contains two printed sheets and the basis for nine aircraft. Machines of the fourth fighter group, of the twentieth, of the three hundred and fifty-sixth and of the seventy-eighth are represented, among them the aircraft of Colonel Richard Hewitt, Ted Lines's machine with the name Thunderbird and the Mustang of Charles Nelson of the Ninth Air Force. The dating reaches from 1943 to the end of the war, so you can choose an earlier finish as well as machines from the last months of the fighting.

Code letters and stripes

The most demanding part of the work is the large code letters on the fuselage and the invasion stripes. Apply the letters along the vertical axis of the cockpit and keep checking the distance from the national insignia, because even a shift of a millimeter shows on the finished model. The colored areas of the engine cowlings are better sprayed, with the decal used only for the fine artwork.

What is not in the box

The set does not contain a model of the aircraft, paints or varnish; it is purely markings. Count on the fact that with nine subjects each marking is there only once, so it makes sense to think the order of the builds through in advance and to put the leftovers aside.