"Nose Art"

Here is my model of the P-47D. This aircraft was flown by Maj. Howard Park of the 513th Fighter Squadron, 406th Fighter Group.

The modifications that I made to the kit include cutting open the oil cooler exhaust shutters on the lower side of the fuselage with a sharp No. 11 exacto blade. I also drilled out the ends of the machine guns, added seatbelts from Tamiya masking tape and buckles from fine fuse wire.

The model goes together well but some filler was needed in the wing and tailplane joints. I filled these with gap filling cyanoacrylate, sanded with increasingly finer grits of wet and dry sandpaper and polished to a smooth finish with Tamiya polishing compound.

The model was airbrushed with Tamiya X-11 Chrome Silver enamel paint. Some panels were darkened by adding a bit of Tamiya X-10 Gun Metal to the Silver. A lot of the kit decals were discarded in favour of painting with enamel paints. This included the red on the nose cowl and the invasion stripes on the fuselage. The canopy was dipped in Future floor polish to achieve that crystal clear look.

The kit decals were used however some silvering did occur with the smaller stencils. Weathering was done with Tamiya acrylics and a airbrush. All panels lines were darkened with a mix of Jo Sonja's raw umber artists acrylic paint thinned with water and flow medium.