1/72 Bell P-39 Airacobra

TESTORS (HELLER) 1:72 BELL P-39Q AIRACOBRA

Reviewer: Jon Hudak (rec.models.scale)
Kit Review submitted: 6 August 2006

Aircraft History:

When one thinks of US WW2 fighter aircraft, names like Mustang, Lightning, Thunderbolt and Corsair are just a few of the ones that may come to mind right away. Though the Bell P39 is well known amongst aviation enthusiasts and hobbyists it is just one of those aircraft that seems to kind of sit in the shadows and take a back seat while all the popular ones bask in the glory.

In short it originally sounded very promising on paper. Not only did it have a radical streamlined shape with it's smooth tapered nose, the P-39 also had some other very novel and original features. Tricycle landing gear a first for it's kind during WW2, mid mounted engine behind the pilot and a menacing sting in the form of a 37 mm nose cannon that fired through the propeller spinner augmented by machine guns in the cowl and wings. The fact that the XP-39 prototype had a superb rate of climb and reached a top speed of 390 mph at an altitude of 20,000 feet in 1938 made it look like a sure-fire winner. Unfortunately that was a false hope for this very plane had no weight gaining armor plate or armament and it was powered by a supercharged Allison V-1710-17 liquid cooled engine. Needless to say with all of the armament and armor plate that would see their way on future production models and the lack of a supercharged engine, its performance and top speed suffered accordingly.

The British who had ordered some 675 examples sight unseen were extremely disappointed with it's performance and it was some 33 mph slower than the projected top speed of 400 mph. Other factors keyed in as to why the British despised it but that's another story and after the delivery of the first one they basically said you can keep the rest!

Much debate remains even today as to what the P-39 could have been had it been equipped with the proposed supercharged engine. As a postwar racer with all its heavy armament, armor plate and other related unnecessary items removed it was a favorite in these circuits and Chuck Yeager himself said that it was a great little airplane. Perhaps the reason it never did get the supercharged engine was that the U.S. had two long range bombers under design (those being the B-17 and B-24.) just prior to the start of the war and that the country was thought impervious to attack since it was surrounded by ocean on either coast. So the need for a high altitude fighter aircraft didn't seem like such a necessity and a low altitude close support aircraft seemed like a more logical and economical choice.

The Q model was by far the most produced version with nearly 5,000 being built most of which were exported to Russia. The most noticeable feature on the Q model were the single .50 caliber gun pods under the wings in place of the four .30 caliber wing guns used on previous models. And as everyone can guess, two .50s were better and more effective than four .30s. We also know the Russians loved the Airacobra as it had great firepower and robust construction and armor plate. It also performed better at low altitude which is where the Russian fighter pilots preferred to fly and fight. It's a little known fact that for German fighter pilots serving on the Russian Front the P39 was considered a more difficult and prized airplane to shoot down. For U.S. pilots serving in the Pacific theatre the type was despised by more than a few of them and was even referred to as "a dog". It was basically "easy meat" for the well trained Japanese Zero pilots and perhaps one of its only advantages over the Zero was its more rugged construction. At altitudes above 12,500 feet the Zero could literally walk away from the P-39 and still had "plenty of pedal" whereas the P-39 started to "peter out". Perhaps one of the better roles for the P-39 in the Pacific was as a ground attack aircraft where it excelled and is where it made its contribution constantly harassing Japanese airfields and supply stations.

The Kit:

Though packed in a Testors box it won't take you long before you realize that this is the old Heller kit. Let's see was it my eagle eye knack for spotting their kits or was it the Heller logo that's stamped on the inside of one of the fuselage halves? There is a total of three sprues worth of parts all molded in a light gray plastic. The canopy is a two piece affair and is surprisingly clear with nice prominent framing but may be a little thick for some tastes. Also provided is a landing light for the bottom of the port wing. The main parts of the airframe feature very fine raised panel lines and a few rivets here and there but nothing to be alarmed at. In fact a friend of mine built this very same kit some 25 years ago and it still looks great today. The fabric effect on the control surfaces looks very nice and the overall quality of the molds are very good. However there is some flash that will need to be cleaned off some of the smaller parts. There are two propellers with the kit, a four bladed one for the French version and the normal 3 bladed version for the US one.

Markings are provided for two aircraft. The first one being the ever popular "Snooks" flown by 1st Lieutenant William Shomo of the 82nd Tactical Recon Squadron based at New Guinea in 1943 while the second is a French based version from the Meknes Fighter School (Ecole de Chasse Meknes) in Meknes Morocco 1945. The French based one while supposedly a P39 is probably more likely to be a P63 so you'll need more than a 4 bladed prop to turn this kit into a P63 Kingcobra. (How about a whole another kit?!) The decals were printed by Scale Master and still look to be of good quality and therefore should be usable. All in all it looks like one of the better Heller kits and let's see how it builds up.

Construction (Part I):

It's ironic that I would eventually build this kit for I used to have one before and got rid of it while cleaning out some of my inventory and especially after getting the much more recent and up to date Academy kit. This time around though I was building it for a gentleman who had generously donated his whole kit collection to my local model club. His only request was that someone build this kit for him so I was more than willing to after his kind act.

I started by doing a dry-fit of the airframe on its landing gear with lead weights so I would know how much to add to prevent it from being a tail sitter. After figuring this out I used slow setting super glue and carefully glued in the fishing sinkers and once cured then started with the cockpit. The "office" is a relatively simple affair with a floorpan, seat, rear bulkhead, stick, instrument panel and what even looks to be a gun sight. Still, not bad for a kit that is at least about 25 years old and sure beats the "pilot on pins" like you would have got on other contemporary kits from the time. I had a small rebuttal when trying to approximate where to glue the floor to in relation to the fuselage as there were no real clear locating points. I used the Academy kit as a reference and that helped to give me a better idea.

After gluing everything together the completed unit was tacked into place on one of the fuselage halves and left to dry. Then it and the interiors of the fuselage halves were brush painted with Humbrol #75 Bronze Green and black for the instrument panel and other small details. I used a silver pencil to highlight some of the details on the instrument panel and then glued the fuselage halves together but not before I made sure I included part # 25 which is the "V" shaped mechanism for the front landing gear.

The wings were then glued together and I started doing some of the seam work on the fuselage. A test fit revealed there would be a decent step on where the right wing met up with the fuselage so later on I shimmed it with some leftover kit sprue pieces to raise up the wing more. Now satisfied with the fit I then glued the wings and stabilizers on and then the model ended up sitting for a couple of months before I got back to it. Luckily the man I was building it for was in no hurry! :-)

Eventually I got back to it and resumed construction and with no other real problems so far I commenced with the "body work". Much to my dismay I realized I was still going to have to do some filling and sanding in the wing root areas. This took a few sessions but went better than had I not shimmed the wing at all, it was just a little more fill and sand, fill and sand, you know the routine! With the airframe taking shape I was almost ready to paint it and the project was now rolling along pretty smoothly.

Painting & Decals (Part I):

Before going any further I will point out that unless noted, all paints used on the model were enamels. Using my Badger 200 airbrush which has been my workhorse of late for quite a while now, all the areas of the model that were to be white like the tail, wing leading edges and nose ring were painted with Humbrol #34 Flat White. No gremlins were encountered and eventually these areas were masked (blue vinyl pin striping stuff for the nose ring, Tamiya for the rest) and the underneath of the model and some other parts were sprayed with Model Master Neutral Gray. Then once again unfortunately the model sat again for probably almost a month or so as I was losing interest and couldn't seem to stick with it or modeling in general.

William T.Shono and "Snooks":

One of the most popular versions in kitted form is the Q model "Snooks 2nd" flown by Lieutenant William T. Shomo of the 82nd TRS based in New Guinea. For nearly a year and a half Shomo failed to score any kills while flying the P-39 and instead took his chances shooting up ground targets and the like. He would finally get his chance in 1945 after the 82nd was equipped with P51 D Mustangs for the same type of work they had previously been doing, ground attack and photo reconnaissance.

On January 9th 1945 Shomo would score his first kill, a Val dive bomber, not exactly a tough opponent for a P-51 but enough to make a pilot lust for more. Just two days later on January 11 1945 while enroute to photograph and shoot up some Japanese airfields with his wingman Paul Lipscomb, Shomo would become an "ace in a day". On that day Shomo and wingman Lipscomb spotted a Betty bomber being escorted by a formation of Ki-61 Hien/Tony fighters and a single Ki-44 Shoki/Tojo fighter. Catching the Japanese pilots by surprise Shomo shot down 4 of the escorting Ki-61 Hien/Tony fighters and then came up under the bottom of the Betty firing his guns into its exposed belly and setting it ablaze all on the first pass! He then scored two more Tonys on the second pass. The Betty exploded while making a crash landing and Shomo had just scored 7 kills in less than 6 minutes which was an amazing feat.

He would later be awarded the Medal Of Honor for bravery on April 1 1945 while at the rank of Major and scored 8 kills during WW2. He would later become a Colonel and serve during the Korean War and transitioned well to the jets of that time. I had the good fortune to meet and talk with the man whom I built this model for and he served under William Shomo during the Korean War and said he was " a peach of an officer" and a very nice man. He told me he heard firsthand how his Colonel shot down the 7 Japanese planes during that one instant and how Shomo said he couldn't believe how the Japanese pilots didn't break up their flight pattern after the first attack and basically said it was like shooting fish in a barrel 1, 2, 3.

Construction (Part II):

Previously I had dunked the canopy parts in Future and while this seemed like a good move, it would have saved me alot of grief had I cut them off the sprues first! You see, when I finally was ready to mask the canopy parts I had to cut them from the sprues and this is when the nasty attachment points reared their ugly heads! No problem I thought, I'll just sand them down and polish them out right? Well, sort of, except it didn't go as smoothly. In the end I got pretty much all of the Future sanded off and even though the parts had been polished out with some very very fine grit polishing cloths, the clarity of the parts was never as good as they once were. Also some of the height of the framing was lost during all the sanding as well.

With no spare parts or substitutes in sight I just had to make do with what I had and forge ahead using the kit parts. A little model wax was used inside and out and then the aforementioned parts were masked with Bare Metal Foil and a brand new #11 blade. Before masking the canopy parts I also test fitted them over the kit supplied radio box that sits behind the pilot. I don't know if it was me or if the kit part was just a tad too large but in the end I ended up making a new one from some thick Evergreen strip. I slapped some flat black paint on it and glued it in place and checked the fit one last time then painted the surrounding area with some more of the Humbrol #75.

Some seat belts were added that were made from masking tape and then the canopy parts were glued on. After a little white glue was used to fill in some gaps at the bottom edge of the windscreen the model was now ready for its return trip to the paint shop.

� Jon Hudak 2006

Painting (Part II):

On a new high which came in the form of a supportive phone conversation with a modeling friend I set to painting on a late Friday night. Previously I'd accidentally broken off the now weakened antenna off the fuselage and now I just said the heck with it and left it off after cleaning up the area with a little sandpaper. "Get out and stay out"! I thought. Using some masking tape I set the demarcation lines for the color breaks and covered up the rest and was ready to paint.

Remember my paint debacle with the P47 (Jon's most recent review on SMAKR - Ed)? Well this time I knew I had a tinlet of Humbrol #66 Olive Drab! However when I opened and stirred it up, it just didn't look like Olive Drab to me so I closed it back up and decided to go with what I had left from the P47 build and that was their #86 Light Olive. This seemed to work out well for the P47 and I like the color so that is what I used.

Not wanting to chance what happened with the P47s wings I did give the model a light wet sanding with some very fine sanding cloths after the paint had thoroughly dried. I then rinsed the model off and allowed it to dry (with my empty airbrush as a blow gun and a hair dryer of course!) and was now ready to spray on a clear gloss in preparation for the decals until I noticed another blunder! It appeared I'd forgotten that some of the New Guinea and Australian based "white tailed" (no not the spider) P39s had the section of their tails masked off that contained the serial number resulting in a yellow coded serial with the original olive drab underneath it in a nice rectangular patch. I debated on how to fix it. The easiest way would have probably been to spray a section of the tail with the o.d. green then cut a strip of tape for each side, and lay it on after the paint is dry. Then when you spray the tail area in white, you'll already have the o.d. green color underneath, peel off the tape and whoila!.

I ended up laying one piece of Tamiya tape on top of another one and cut a window out of the tape. Since the top piece of tape was a little bit shorter than the bottom one I had no problem separating the two and I carefully lined them up on each side of the tail and smoothed them down. A quick blast of the 86 green in the airbrush again and whoila! problem solved!

� Jon Hudak 2006

Decals/Markings:

With that mess out of the way a coat of Testors Gloss Cote was sprayed on and after allowing it to dry I could proceed with the decals. The kit's decals were printed by Scale Master and showed no signs of wear, looking practically like new and of good quality. I thought they'd present no problems but when I first tried one of the "star & bar" US national insignia I was horrified when all of what I assume was the clear topcoat of the decal flaked off of the decal something fierce.

Drat! Luckily I had the excellent Eagle Strike # P39 decal sheet and there were markings for William Shomo's "Snooks" so I just used these and they performed admirably reacting nicely with Micro Set and Sol, (the latter where needed). I tried the kit's serial numbers for the tail and got more of the flaking soon after its emersion in the water. I thought I'd try it anyway and maybe this would only be on the top and could be wiped off. Nothing doing and all I got was a hazy white mess so I quickly removed it and used the ones from the Eagle Strike sheet.

Afterwards the areas where the decals were applied were wiped with a damp cloth to remove any excess setting solution and decal adhesives and a coat of Testors Dullcote Lacquer was sprayed on for the final flat coat.

Final Bits:

With the model nearing completion I painted all the landing gear parts, insides of the gear doors and wheel rims with some more of the Humbol #75. The kits machine guns were cleaned up and along with the tires were painted with Floquil Grimy Black which is more of a charcoal gray and a little more subtle than say flat black and not as stark.

The main landing gear units for under the wings were then assembled. The locating points for these are little half circles that are in the wheel wells. While locating and matching them up was no problem they are a bit flimsy til the glue sets. The front nose wheel unit was no problem but the part had a tendency to want to veer crookedly off to one side unless it was firmly attached to the "scissor" part. In the end I got it to sit straight but I was not happy with the way the nose of the kit seems to point downwards somewhat instead of having a more elevated "nose up" stance. Photos of P39s on the ground almost always show the nose pointing up a bit much like a P38 Lightning. Whether this is from the cockpit floor being slightly too low or maybe the nose wheel strut a little too short I don't know but it is something to watch out for. A simple fix could be to lengthen the nose wheel strut by possibly making a small block of plastic and affixing it to the end where it won't be seen once it's glued into the wheel well if that makes sense.

Once the gear were are all on and dry I painted the exhaust pipes with some Floquil Roof Brown and dry brushed them with some Model Master Burnt Iron and silver. The prop I had previously painted with Tamiya XF-3 Flat Yellow and XF-69 Nato Black so that was done and out of the way. The said yellow was used for the spinner and backing plate now and the spinner especially needed a good cleaning up to smooth it out. The machine guns were simply glued on with some Elmers white glue and later highlighted with a silver pencil for a little more dimension. I used some pastels around all the machine guns and their ports including the 37 mm nose cannon and spinner as well as the exhaust areas to dirty things up a bit. Some light gray pastel was used to represent fading on the wing flaps and I dry brushed the landing gear with some light gray to highlight some of the detail and add a little more depth to the otherwise dark units.

The navigation lights on the wings were painted with a base coat of Chrome Silver followed up with Clear Tamiya Red and Green. Lastly I used a silver pencil to highlight some of the raised panel line detail to add a little more wear and tear and break up the monotony of all the green. While the small front nose gear door was glued on I simply left off the main doors for the nose which were about a foot thick scale wise and mostly because there were no solid attachment points for them. After all this I also didn't want to risk mucking up the undersides just for the sake of these less than stellar parts. I felt they'd fall off if you just looked at them the wrong way so off they stayed kind of like the antenna! :-) Besides they aren't that noticeable if you leave them off anyway.

� Jon Hudak 2006

Conclusion:

So with a newer and more modern mainstream P-39 kit out there in the form of the Academy kit is it worth building the old Heller kit? I'll let you make that decision on your own, but I can say it turned out to be much better than I thought it would. If you have one languishing around in your stash and have been thinking about doing a P-39, go for it as it still builds into a nice model. I never thought I would see this kit again but I must say it was a good experience and it made me come up with some new ways of handling things especially in the masking and painting department. Again I will say just because a kit doesn't have recessed panel lines doesn't mean it's not worth building.

Also one thing I liked about this kit over the Academy kit is that the car door entrance is not positioned open for you like it is on the Academy kit so it's one less thing you have to mess with. I've tried dry fitting the Academy's and it will require a little tweaking to get it all to fit in the closed position. And besides not knocking the Academy kit as it is a beauty but they did incorrectly provide you with the left door as the open one which is incorrect. The left door was almost impossible to open due to the positioning of the throttle linkage on that side of the cockpit, it may as well have been welded shut and pilots always used the rightside door for going in and out. I didn't compare the kit to any drawings but it does look for the most part pretty accurate and I think the model captures the look of the real thing rather well. Bottomline? An oldie but a goodie.

References:

P-39 Airacobra in action Squadron/Signal Publications
Zero Japan's Legendary Fighter Robert C. Mikesh Motorbooks Intl.
Miscellaneous Internet

� Jon Hudak 2006

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