1:48 Bell P-39Q/N Airacobra Full Colour 3D Interior Cockpit Set (for Hasegawa JT93 kit)

The interior of a cockpit with the engine behind your back

An engine mounted behind the pilot set the Bell P-39 Airacobra apart from all other American fighters of its day. The shaft to the propeller ran under the cockpit floor and a 37 mm cannon fired through the propeller hub. Entry was through automobile-style doors in the side, and the machine had nosewheel landing gear, which was still unusual in 1941. The N and Q versions were the most numerous and most of them went to the Soviet Union, where a number of famous fighter aces flew them.

The contents are a full-color print for the inside of the cockpit: the main panel, the side walls with their levers, the gunsight frame and small labels. The layering gives the knobs and the bezels a height that flat decal film can never reach, and the work is just as easy.

Soviet pilots took to the Airacobra for its hard-hitting armament and its behavior at low altitude, where most of the fighting on the Eastern Front took place. A model in such a livery is among the rewarding subjects and a cockpit worked out in detail is especially worth having with it.

A building tip. Thanks to its glazed doors, the Airacobra offers a view into the cockpit from the side, not only from above. It therefore pays to give care to the side walls as well, which are hardly seen at all with other types. Level the surface before application and let the paint harden for at least one day, otherwise the surface will dent under the pressure of tweezers.

It applies to 1:48 scale and matches the interior of the Hasegawa kit. The arrangement of the panels can be used without trouble on both the N and the Q version, because their cockpits hardly differ.