¹⁄32

Republic P-47D-30

History

As chronicled, the P-47D-30 was powered by the monster Pratt & Whitney R-2800-59 capable of 2,300 hp. The plane was a monster weighing in at over 13,500 lbs loaded. Top speed was in excess of 400 mph at altitude. Range exceeded 570 miles. Armament included eight (8) Browning 50 caliber machine guns and the array of possible external ground attack ordinance seemed unlimited.

the kit

The kit is Hasegawa's excellent 1/32 scale P-47D representing "Tarheel Hal". The kit represents a P-47D-30 from the 9th Airforce, 358th Fighter Group, 366 Fighter Squadron flown by Lt. Davis based in Germany 1945. His squadron markings were IA*N, S/N 433240.

construction

The kit was excellent overall with no fit issues and clearly written instructions. For this kit I included several aftermarket sets including Eduard photoetch P-47D exterior kit (EDU32174), Quickboost (QUB32038) cast resin Pratt & Whitney R-2800 engine and Quickboost (QUB32034) cast resin gun barrels. All the aftermarket items are outstanding quality and accuracy. All engine wiring seen in the photos was accomplished from scratch using wire properly dimensioned and scaled from the original wiring size. This was my first shot at an Alclad paint model but with the benefit of this experience I can unequivocally state that the stuff is magic and I WILL be doing it again.

summary

In summary the kit was a breeze to put together and addition of the aftermarket items was seamless. I very much enjoyed researching the subject of this offering and constructing my model was just a lot of clean fun. I would recommend this kit to anyone and should be something that is taken on by modelers with some experience for the simple fact that the dimensioning and scratch building engine wiring is a task and masking and painting the spectacular paint scheme can be challenging.