Lockheed P-38 / F-5B-1 Lightning

 

 

Even if the recon nose is made for the Tamiya kit, .... 

... after increasing the width of the fuselage by about about 0.6 mm, the fit on the Hasegawa kit ... 

... is quite satisfying.  

After filling and sanding, i am happy ... 

... with the result. 

Props are attached with magnets 

After glueing, sanding and polishing the cam-windows 

Front and rear canopy in place 

She starts to look good 

 

Primer is on ...  

... and the first airframe alu  

Turbochargers ... 

After 2 times paint stripping ... 

Three times primed ... 

... and airbrushed with different products ... 

... she now looks ok to me. 

After long research with support (thanks a lot Boris), i decided to add the anti-glare panels 

First time to use chipping fluid 

After adding the first decals (Superb quality btw, the decals are from about 1998!) ... 

... I learned the French Cocarde on the wings was wrong. I also found the anti glare was black, not OD. 

So I removed the Cocarde ... 

... and applied (again) a wrong one. 

No chance fixing it, it did remove the paint from the wing ... 

... primed it again 

After many many paint stripping, re-priming and painting 

I painted the US insigna with a mask and the airbrush 

Then I was able to do some washing and soil 

the maintenance people were not careful enough when filling the petrol. 

 

And here she is. After many hours of ordering books, investigation, reading and becoming desperate ... 

... this is most probably how she looked on July 31st 1944 when St-Ex started for his final mission. Once again, thank you very much for your help bobolex, it is highly appreciated! 

according to the documentation, the plane was delivered to the USAF in February or March 1944 

and then 'forwarded' to the 'Free French' Army.  

That means, the airframe was pretty new and pretty 'new' on July 31st 1944.I did not investigate how many missions the airframe had that date ... I guess not too many