Don Gentile's "immaculate" P-51B Shangri-La, as it might have appeared the day of his final flight, three days after he completed his tour, Spring '44.

Aggressively buzzing the aerodrome for the correspondents, the former Eagle Squadron volunteer and victor of 21.5 aerial kills and several ground kills nicked his prop and bellied in!

Unhurt but shaken, he crawled out of his broken-back, previously immaculate steed Shangri-La, and a furious CO Blakeslee sent him home ASAP!













Tamiya's 1/48 kit. A fine kit, I used not a single drop of filler! The only real sanding was the bottom of the radiator.

The cockpit is rather spartan. The seat is good and the instrument panel excellent.

The decals are, suprisingly, poor They are off-register, brittle and did not settle well, even with a variety of setting solutions. The printed wing stripes don't fit, going off at all different angles around the leading edge. I painted mine. Fortunately, Gentile's plane didn't have the stripes on the empendage.

Overall, a fine kit of my favorite P-51.

Hi Fred

Nice! What brand paints did you use? - I like that dull red.

No filler at all?! That's a fine recommendation for the kit. I've had one waiting on the shelf for years - you've made me want to build it now!

Thanks for the heads-up on the decals.

All the best

Rowan

Nice one Fred, I too have this in my stash plus the Aries cockpit (I think). This has now moved right to the top of the to do pile. Thanks for sharing
Mal

Rowan & Mal,

Thanks, glad to whet your Mustang appetite

The OD/neutral gray is Polly Scale. The white is old Pactra acrylic, and the yellow zinc chromate is--get this --Pro Modeller! Waste not want not! The cockpit is Model Master's US WWII cockpit set dull dark green.

The red nose is Model master Acryl insignia red WAG-tinted to match the decal red. Tamuya has a formula for their red and gloss red, but I lack both.

No filler is somewhat innaccurate. The filler is simply Tamiya extra-thin liquid glue, Ambroid liquid, and some sllllllooooooowwwwwwwwwww drying, non-toxic liquid glue that filled the gaps with the desolving plastic, that and paint. Guess that really isn't filler per se'? But the seam gaps are so small that is all I did.

I look forward to seeing yours'!

Fantastic looking Mustang mate!

Looking good. I have one of those in the stash too and would really like to build it. Maybe we should have a mustang build along...
Anyway, really nice job.
Leon

Hi Fred:

Very nice model. Great job. I like very much these Mustang kits. As you have seen I posted mine (Ding Hao!) in the Pre Flight Check Forum. I have two more in my stash that I will build in a next future.
Welldone

Thanks for sharing your pictures with us Fred.... That is a really beautiful lydone P-51 !!!!!

Tamiya's F-51 Korean War Mustang is the same as far as not needing hardly any filler, and I also had some problems with the decals in that kit. They cracked and shattered too easy and the teeth around the nose was a bear... that decal split in three places...

Hi Penny,

Thanks, if you ever get down to Johnson City, you can see it in all it's glory

Tamiya was not much help. They said they would replace the decals but that I had to send the remains of mine back to them -- at my expense. Not that that will bankrupt me, but the principle of the matter...

Curiously, their reissued 1/100 jets' decals worked flawlessly on the ME-262 / ME-163, MiG-19 AND F-104G, and the 30 year-old decals of the F-105 and Draken were no worse than Shangri-La's.

My two sets of their 1/100 F-86 / MiG-15...the decals are hopeless! Anyone have an extra set? I notice Hobbycraft has reissued the set; I have written them twice -- no reply. :-(

hi fred! there was a new member a while ago who did aviation art,he had a website where he had photos of his visit to english ww2 USAAF airfields, he also had a big then and now section, one set of pics being the crash site of this aircraft, and theres not much difference since except a large tree was cut down (possibly the thing he hit) now i can't remember his username, but i'll have a search around to see if i can find that site again and give you a link

found it! the members name is wade mayers but i still don't remember his username! i found his site by googling for "shangri la crash site"
http://wademeyersart.tripod.com/id38.html