Modelling Now and Then: Revell Bell P-39 Airacobra
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Fighter planes are exciting. What better find could there be for an
11-year old boy than to go a few doors down the hallway from his classroom,
to Custer Elementary’s library, and there encounter David C. Cooke’s
Fighter Planes That Made History? (Copyright 1958, published by G. P.
Putnam's Sons of New York.) Its 71 pages had thirty-nine planes Mr. Cooke
had selected… (Hmm: there’s a good trivia/discussion stimulator/argument
starter concept: what 39 fighters from history would YOU select, readers?)
…plus a last page entitled ‘History Makers of the Future’,
with pictures and short descriptions of the McDonnell F-101 Voodoo, Republic
F-105 Thunderchief, Convair F-106 Delta Dart, McDonnell F3H Demon, Vought
F8U Crusader, and –of course!—the coolest jet fighter there
EVER was, the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter!
But the plane that really hooked me was the one on the title page, and
it was unnamed! In a three-quarter head-on view, it dived into action
as its grim pilot glowered from the tiny cockpit, while streams of tracer
fire poured from the prop hub, upper nose, and both wings.
I can’t remember how I found out that lethal-looking airplane
was a Bell P-39 Airacobra, but I’ve liked it ever since…even
after reading what a disappointment it was to our air force. In more modern
times, I’ve read the Wings/Airpower magazine articles entitled ‘Iron
Dog’, and Edwards Park’s book Nanette: An Exaggeration, whose
P-39 saved him, personally, but otherwise seemed even worse than the rest
of the lot in actually winning the war for America…
But at the time, the airplane was so neat, I just had to have a model
of it!
This would have been around 1962, and I’m not sure when the first
P-39 kit came available. The America’s Hobby Center catalog I still
have from September 1966 lists both Airfix and Revell 1/72nd scale models,
and that might be about as soon as they first came out. In any case, neither
appeared at the drug store where I bought all my kits. So I ended up drawing
inspiration from my best buddy next door, whose dad carved as a hobby,
and got another book from the Custer library entitled Model Planes You
Can Make. It showed how to carve a P-39 from wood, and I did!
The results were pretty crude, but painted up in prototype colors, with
Testors’ silver and yellow enamels, decorated with paper insignia
I colored and pasted on, and bristling with pin and toothpick gun barrels,
it satisfied my lust for the plane in the picture.
Then, I got a good model!
Going through my kit collection and other modeling stuff recently, trying
to get things in order, or at least renew my memory about what I actually
own (339 unbuilt plastic kits at last count!), I came across this very
rare survivor from those Calvin-esque modeling days. The balsa carving
is long gone, but not this Revell 1/72nd scale ‘Authentic Kit’.
It gave me a nostalgic twinge, although my judge’s eye still works.
Turning it over in my hands, I realized that –for the time—I
hadn't done too bad a job on it. If it were cleaned up a bit and placed
amid ‘all our models’ at the yearly NorthWest Scale Modelers’
display at the Museum of Flight, it would not have appeared out of place
to casual viewers. Only skilled modelers would have recognized, right
away, its relative crudity of assembly and finish.
I remember building it. It was after quite a few other WWII warplanes
in 1/72nd scale, mostly from the cheaper Airfix and Hawk lines. Evidence:
the quality of workmanship is a notch above many of those I remember building,
but even more significant is that the entire aircraft is painted, not
just a little trim color here and there. Although this kit was molded
in olive drab plastic, the upper surfaces are all painted with Testors’
enamel, and the underside in medium flat gray. Even the wheel wells have
been daubed with light metallic green, an attempt to duplicate zinc-chromate
primer.
I also remember this kit was a gift. Not a stand-alone, but part of
the ‘Pacific Sky Fighters’, one of several triple-kit sets
Revell put out. Each box had three different airplane portraits on the
cover to go with the contents: in this case, the others were the Grumman
F4F Wildcat, and the Nakajima Ki.43 Hayabusa. The last in Thai markings…obscure,
but very cool!
My P-39’s paints are dull, dark, and flat. I remember that shortly
before acquiring it, I’d bought the Testors’ ‘Military
Flats’ paint set. Prior colors were from racks at Thunderbird drug
store, and were all glossy, for general-purpose modeling and craft use.
What a professional upgrade these purpose-mixed military flats represented…well
worth the fortune I had to pay for the set: ninety-eight cents!
By happenstance, another Seattle IPMS chapter member brought a large
box of kits to a recent meeting. He was cleaning out his stash, and the
boxful was mostly old 1/72nd scale, many just bagged without box art,
instructions, or decals. One was this same Revell ‘Authentic Kit’,
and how could I not take it? The guy wanted only fifty cents, list price
in 1966!
So I did a NABBROKE over a few recent evenings, a ‘Nostalgic Aging
Baby Boomer Real Old Kit Experience’. Here’s my review of
the build, today…a rebuild of a kit I first did forty years ago:
There are 30 olive-drab parts, and a clear 1-piece canopy. The only
‘feature’ is an inset panel on the port fuselage side that
detaches to show a ‘detailed’–laughable by modern standards—Allison,
to emphasize the uniqueness of the P-39’s engine location, below
and just behind the pilot, right on the aircraft's center of gravity.
I would say that detail engraving is not at all bad for the model’s
size or time. The rivets are not outrageously oversized. The panel lines
are raised but not thick. The control surfaces only slightly overdo the
fabric-covered affect. Fit is reasonably good throughout, except for the
almost-always problematic line between the top wing panels and the wing
root fillets at the base of the fuselage moldings. In all these areas,
it is much superior to the Hawker Hurricane kit of the same series.
During this rebuild, I left off the underwing .50-caliber machine gun
pods, and instead drilled the wing for a quartet of wire stubs to simulate
.30-cals. After all these years, I had to try once again for that old
book’s title-page subject. (If you care to, you can read more about
that book and me in the June newsletter of the Seattle IPMS. Please see
my ‘Hurricane Bookshelf’ column.)
Inadequate the real airplane may have been, but you have to admit it’s
cool looking. If you build this old Revell kit, as I’ve now done
twice, with that interval in between, let me assure you it’s just
as suitable as it’s ever been to run around with while making engine
and gunfire sounds! Another chance to
“Build what YOU want, the way YOU want to, and above all have
fun!"
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