Academy 1/72 North American P-51C Mustang

ACADEMY 1:72 P-51C MUSTANG
'INBOX Review'

Reviewer: Dave McDougall (crustyoldseadog@aol.com)
A fully built review of this kit exists on SMAKR - see Related Review links below

Kit: Academy 1/72^nd scale P-51C Mustang (Kit #1616)

Parts: Sturdy top opening box which has some nice photographs of a completed model on the side of the lid. The kit parts come in a sealed plastic bag and comprises 61 parts molded in grey-green plastic and 9 clear parts. It’s a pity that the clear parts don’t come in a separate bag but at least mine appear to have escaped being scratched. A further bag contains the goodly sized decal sheet. A folded instruction booklet complete the box’s contents.

Instructions: Compact folded leaflet. Unfolds into eight sides of instructions. These are very similar in presentation to the instructions you find in Hasegawa kits. There’s also one extra double sided insert giving additional paint schemes. The instructions are very comprehensive, with in-place painting instructions and full painting and decaling guides. There are no specific model paint codes offered, just a mixture of FS codes and generic colours. The instructions include a sprue tree diagram so that you can check that nothing’s missing from your kit. Actually, the instructions looked a bit unclear in places as they’re very ‘busy’ with lots of symbols, numbers and options everywhere. – An example of this is at stage two of the instructions where you are given the option of sticking two holes in the top of the fuselage. There’s no indication given at stage two as to why you should be doing this… to sum up therefore, I think they’ll take a lot of careful reading.

Versions: A choice of three colour schemes is offered in this kit. These are: -

(1) USAAF P-51C-10-NT (s/n 42-103896), 530^th FS/311^st FG, China July 1945;

(2) P-51C-11-NT (s/n 44-11073), Chinese Air Force;

(3) USAAF P-51B-NA (s/n 42-106750), 5^th FS/52^nd FG/15^th AF, Italy, Summer 1944.

Decals: Comprehensive decal sheet; apparently printed in Korea by Academy. Nothing really unexpected here but they do include lots of warning panel information so you get 47 decals in total. Printing looks good as everything looks in register with good colour definition and nice crispy printed edges. The decals feel nice and thin too so I’m hoping that they won’t be any problem when it comes to actually using them.

Accuracy: I didn’t do any number crunching with this kit. (I tend to lean towards the “if it looks right then it’ll do” school of modeling.) I’m also not an expert on the P51. Having said all that, the fuselage and wings looked fine to me when I compared them to some illustrations of the P51C. I didn’t spot any obvious flaws (and that’s good enough for me!).

Detail: Lots of nice detail in this kit. – Starting with the cockpit interior, you get quite a good representation of the pilot’s seat (in two parts), along with a stick and instrument panel (no decal for this though so it’ll have to be hand-painted), plus plenty of molded detail on the cockpit floor and walls. Moving onto the undercarriage, this is nicely done being not too over scale and I like the representation of tread on the tires. For once in a kit, I’m pleased to see that the wheel-wells aren’t hollow(!) and have some nice interior detail. (I’ve no idea whether it’s accurate or not, but it looks good!). Finally, the exterior of the kit has very finely inscribed panel lines and lots of bits of detail. I imagine that if it appeared on the actual aircraft, then it’s here on the kit.

Options: If you’ve read my version information above you’ll see that, according to the painting instructions, you can produce either a P-51C or a B from this kit. There’s a choice of two different engine exhausts. (I assume that one is for the C and the other for the B version, but Academy don’t bother to mention this, or say which is for which!) There’s an air intake thingie on the underside of the fuselage (just to the rear of the trailing edge of the wings) which you can fit in an open or closed position. Academy have been quite generous when it comes to payload. – They’ve provided good representations of the following: 4.5in rocket pods (x2), 500lb bombs (x2), 108gal. Reinforced paper drop tank (x1) and 75gal. Drop tank (x2).

Impressions: A very nice looking kit indeed. Lots of lovely detail and with the interesting choice of doing a Chinese aircraft. Loses a point for the over-complex instructions but I think well worth buying.

Other Comments: Referred to as “The Cadillac of the Skies” by the character Jim in J. G. Ballard’s book “Empire of the Sun”, the P51 Mustang has to be one of the best looking prop fighters (imho anyway!). The P51 series was the most successful fighter programme in history. Mustang and P51 variants served mainly in Europe, their prime mission being the almost incredible one of flying all the way from British bases to targets of the 8^th Airforce deep in Germany – Berlin or beyond – escorting heavies and gradually establishing Allied air superiority over Europe.

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