1:72 49th Fighter Group, Pt.1

The 49th Fighter Group, part one

At the start of 1942 an American fighter group arrived in Australia whose pilots had nothing behind them but basic training, and most of whom had not sat in a combat type for more than a few dozen hours. The situation gave them no time to find their feet: Japanese formations were attacking a northern Australian port and its surroundings, and the defense stood or fell with the handful of machines the unit had available. Some of those, moreover, were still being put together out of crates after shipping.

They flew robust fighters with a liquid-cooled engine, machines that could not match their opponents either in agility or in rate of climb. The pilots therefore had to change tactics: attack from above, in a single pass, and not get drawn into a turning fight they could not win. Anyone who broke that rule usually did not come back. The hard school eventually bore fruit, and the group worked its way up among the most respected parts of the Allied air forces in the Southwest Pacific.

Advice on the sheet

The markings of this period, quickly painted, often repaired and slightly different on every machine, are among the most rewarding subjects of the whole war. Store decals flat and out of direct light; the carrier film grows brittle in time and the print fades in the sun, so an older sheet breaks up at exactly the moment you need all of it. Before you start work, check that the individual elements match the variant you have chosen, and only then cut. That will spare you the unpleasant discovery that the missing number was one line over.