1/48 Eduard P-400 Airacobra

by Lee Kolosna

The story of the emasculation of the promising little fighter from the upstart Bell Aircraft Corporation is a well-known one. Stripped of its supercharger at the insistence of the US Army, any chance of the nimble P-39 being a competitive aircraft (especially at altitudes over 10,000 feet) were destroyed. Bell’s design team had argued vociferously against deletion of the supercharger, but lost out to doctrines that favored low altitude operations only. Coupled with a relatively small internal fuel capacity, the Airacobra was quickly relegated to the role of close air support of military ground operations. The French ordered 200 of the export version of the P-39, which was designated the P-400. With the fall of France in the summer of 1940, the RAF took over the order, upped it to 475 aircraft, and waited for delivery. As the first Airacobras trickled in, the Brits were horrified at their dismal performance. After a brief experiment with RAF No. 601 Squadron, delivery of the remaining P-400s was refused and the order cancelled. By this time, the United States had entered the war and every available combat capable aircraft, even the flawed P-39, were deployed immediately to the South West Pacific. During 1942, the P-400s found themselves involved in the fierce fighting on New Guinea, Guadalcanal, and Australia against highly trained and superbly equipped Japanese forces. The P-39’s rugged construction and tricycle landing gear suited it well in the harsh conditions it encountered. With F4F Wildcats flying top cover against the ever-present Zeros, the Airacobras provided excellent low-level support to the ground forces.

Bell’s manufacturing lines continued to churn out P-39s, and they were given to the Soviets in massive quantities -- a testament to the amazing industrial capacity of the United States during the war. The Soviet method of using aircraft as supplements to field artillery favored the P-39’s strengths, and they enjoyed success at the hand of VVS pilots. Over 10,000 P-39 and P-63s were made, a remarkable number for a second-tier fighter aircraft.

The buzz on this magnificent little kit from Eduard has been well deserved. The only clue that this is not a new molding from Tamiya or Hasegawa is the light olive color of the styrene. A nose weight is provided, as well as masks for the landing light, the canopy panes, the clear glass behind the pilot’s head, the wheels, the anti-skid strips, and the black portion of the shark’s mouth. Detail is finely engraved and gorgeous. What struck me is the near total lack of molding or ejector pin marks. Two sets of wheels are provided, one with flattened bottoms and one without. You also receive extra parts for other versions that Eduard is planning to release. As it is, one can make every P-39 up to the Q model with the underwing .50 caliber gun pods. The decals are nicely printed and are very thin. The only quibbles one could make about the kit is the lack of instrument faces (to be provided in the Profi-pak version), the lack of a seat harness (again Profi-pak), the shallow repesentation of the two nose gun charging handles on the instrument panel, and the thickness of the wing leading and trailing edges. Everything else about this kit is truly state of the art. 

The cockpit went together very quickly. The only big question is what is the proper color to paint it? Bert Kinzey, in his Detail and Scale book on the P-39 reports that most aircraft were painted in a color called Bell Green, which is darker and greener than our old favorite Interior Green ANA 611. Bert bases his statement on research done by the Yanks Air Museum during the recent restoration of a P-39N. Unfortunately, Bert doesn’t give us a Federal Standard color match, so we are forced to make our own attempt at replicating Bell Green. After consulting with Larry Webster, of the New England Air Museum, I settled on painting my cockpit with Polly Scale RAAF Foliage Green (a good match for FS34092, or Euro I Green), then drybrushed it with a lighter green (I used Pale Green FS34227). It looks like a pretty good match for the color photos in the Detail and Scale book. I added a photo-etched seat harness from an Eduard set.

The engine drive shaft in the nose wheel well is a little too long to fit the space and needs to be shortened by 5 millimeters or so. I did have a problem when I glued in the cockpit assembly to the fuselage half. Somehow I missed the correct placement just slightly, which manifested itself by throwing off the alignment of the two halves. This created some seams that needed to be filled that other modelers who have built this kit haven’t experienced, and it made setting up the proper dihedral of the wings much more difficult than it should have been. My recommendation to others is to place the cockpit assembly in the fuselage without glue, allowing it to find its own equilibrium.

The landing gear doors for the main gear that attach to the belly of the aircraft are not be perpendicular to the ground, but should make an angle of about 70 degrees. This requires the modeler to snip a millimeter or two off the delicate door retraction pieces (numbered C18). The propeller blades are individually painted and then glued inside the spinner with the 20mm cannon barrel. I found that the spinner is slightly undersized, but it is not really noticeable.

I elected to use the kit decals to depict Wahl Eye II, flown by Lt. Eugene Wahl on the island of New Guinea in 1942. Since this aircraft was originally manufactured for the RAF, it was painted in the standard temperate camouflage scheme of Dark Green and Dark Earth. Bell used Dupont paints that were pretty faithful to the RAF specs. I used Testor Acryl for the green and Polly Scale for the brown. The underside color, however, required a lot more investigation. Some sources say it’s light blue (Eduard’s suggestion), some say RAF Sky Type S, and yet another group has settled on light gray. According to color researcher Dana Bell, the latest information indicates that the actual color was called Sky Grey. So, what FS color does this match to? FS36463, according to the new book by Paul Lucas entitled Camouflage and Markings No. 2:The Battle for Britain, RAF – May to December 1940. No manufacturer makes model paint in this exact shade, so one is forced to mix one’s own brew. I chose to start with Testor Acryl Light Gray, FS36495, and darkened it with a bit of black. Close enough. I also mixed my own Light Blue for the color of the spinner and top of the tail fin using a 50/50 mix of Testor Acryl French Blue and Flat White.

The EZ Masks provided by Eduard work very well. I’ve never used pre-made masks before, and I can tell you that I could grow to love these things! They fit very well and saved a lot of time usually devoted to the tedious task of masking. It appears, after looking at photos of Wahl Eye II, that Eduard’s dimensions for the shark mouth are slightly too large. I shifted around the edges of the mask and was able to reduce the overall size of the marking.

I used drafting tape to lay out the camouflage demarcation lines. Once again, Bell Green was used for the wheel wells and landing gear struts. A coat of Future was applied in preparation of the kit decals. I ran into two problems at this point. The decals are very thin and tend to be difficult to position once on the model. They also fold over on themselves if you’re not careful. I cut down the shark mouth markings and nearly lost one trying to get it to fit into the new, smaller footprint. As it is, I had to touch up a couple of the teeth with paint after the decal dried. The yellow used for the letters of "Wahl Eye" and "Pat" was very translucent, showing the camouflage line underneath the decal readily. Rats! I compensated by overpainting each letter by hand with RLM04 Yellow. Another coat of Future prepared the model for the weathering phase.

Like the famous F4U Corsairs at Guadalcanal’s Henderson Field, these Airacobras were rode hard and put up wet. The paint was badly faded, coral dust got all over everything, and exhaust stains were very prominent. The modeler is faced with a dilemma. How does one portray a severely weathered aircraft without making it look too weathered? My approach was to first mask off all the control surfaces and paint them with a lightened version of the camouflage colors, as the fabric tended to bleach out more quickly than the painted metal surfaces. In the panel lines, I applied a wash of artist’s oils (Burnt Umber and Payne’s Gray) thinned with Turpenoid. A dusting of dark gray pastels along each line followed. In the middle of each panel I drybrushed a light tan or a medium green to add some more representation of the severe fading that these aircraft endured. I then sprayed a light coat of a dirt and mud mix (using Polly Scale paints of the same name) all over the aircraft, making the application heavier on the underside of the model close to the landing gear. Some chips and scratches were added with a silver Berol pencil, and finally a coat of Polly Scale Clear Flat sealed it all up. I normally don’t like to give such a heavy hand to weathering, but these airplanes were really, really dirty! I still tried to restrain myself as much as possible, which is the best advice when weathering. A little goes a very long way.

Since the throttle assembly sticks halfway out into the opening for the port cabin door, most pilots entered the P-39 from the right side. I glued the port door shut, but it doesn’t fit as well as I would have liked, with a slight gap all around the top of the doorframe. I also bent the doors a little to make them match the contours of the fuselage better, but this introduced stress marks in the clear styrene that are visible if you look at it closely enough. Most photos of P-400s deployed in the Pacific show that there was no radio mast present. I made the aerial wire from transparent nylon sewing thread and painted it with a black Sharpie marker. The fit of the nose landing gear doors is also not precise and took some fiddling to make acceptable. I added the wing .30 caliber guns, the pitot tube (which looks just a bit too thick to my eye), the wheels, and the propeller spinner. The 20mm nose canon was drilled out, as was the ports of the nose machine guns. I also drilled out the hoist point on the rear of the fuselage.

Conclusion

This is a sweet little model! Eduard is to be commended for making such a nice kit that compares so well with the best models made today. My thanks go to Greg Schneck at Carolina Hobbies for the review sample.

Lee

• Kinzey, Bert: P-39 Airacobra in Detail, Detail and Scale Volume 67
• Webster, Larry: E-mail conversations about Bell Green
• Bell, Dana: E-mail conversations about Sky Grey
• Lucas, Paul: Camouflage and Markings No.2: The Battle for Britain, RAF May to December 1940, Scale Aircraft Monographs