Lifelike Decals

1/48 P-47D Thunderbolt Pt. 2 decal sheet

Product # 48-009  

Product Article by Steve Bamford on Feb 22  2005

 

 

 

Lifelike Decals is a Decal company out of Japan.  The owners have been involved in  the researching of decal sheets for other companies for many years.  

This latest decal sheet features three different P-47D's.  This is Part 2 of  a series dealing with the P-47D's.  The P-47D is one of the most famous US built fighters of WW2.  The Thunderbolt was a classic American design.....take a big engine....and build a plane around it and load the wings up with big machine guns.

This decal sheet provides a good variety artwork and markings as you can see in the instruction sheets.

Each plane has some sort of nose art or text or huge amounts of kill markings for a certain famous ace.

The first plane is a P-47D-30-RA bubbletop, serial #44-33240 flown by Lt. 'Ike' Davis of 366 FS, 358 FG in probably May 1945 at Sandhofen, Germany.  This aircraft has nose covered.  This plane is overall silver with an orange tail and orange and yellow nose cowl ring.  A large portion of the rear part of the engine cowling is covered in dark blue like a night time sky (and red outline) with white stars and the yellow text "Tarheel Hal.  

The prop blades are black with yellow tips and an orange prop hub.  The landing gear doors are white.  There are white stripes on the tail and rear horizontal flying surfaces (stripes provided as decals).  

Click on images below to see larger images
The second plane is a P-47D-5-RE Razorback, serial #42-8434 flown by Major Henry B. Kucheman of the 354FS, 355FG in early 1944 at Steeple Morden, England.  This aircraft has nose art of a nude angel with the text "Miss Behave" and "Lil Lo".  This plane is overall olive drab with grey undersurfaces and a white (dirty white?) nose cowl ring.  The  horizontal tail flying surfaces have white stripes and the prop blades are black with yellow tips.  This aircraft has blue wheel hubs with a white set of wings.  

The Third plane is a P-47D-30-RE bubbletop, serial #44-20392 flown by Lt. Walter A. Grabowski of the 511FS in the 405FG in May 1945 in Kitzingen, Germany.  This aircraft has almost endless bombing mission markings for tonnage dropped as well as markings such as brooms for sweep missions, umbrellas for cover and aircraft emblems for escort missions.  This plane is overall silver with olive drab on the top of the fuselage as well as a black stripes on the tail and rear horizontal flying surfaces (stripes provided as decals).  The prop blades are black with yellow tips.  According to his son, he had no confirmed kills to his credit .  

The quality of these decals is quite pleasing and of a high quality.  The carrier film in nicely limited around the decals.  The decals themselves are clearly printed and in perfect register with fine clear tiny stencils.  The colour of the decals appears solid enough to prevent paint showing through the decals.  Some decals (such as the noseart decals) come in 2 layers to ensure good coverage.  

You can purchase these decals either directly from Lifelike Decals at fax number is +81-3-5680-6733, and e-mail is lifelike@eos.ocn.ne.jp. or from HobbyLink Japan.  

Other shops that stock Life like Decals are *Hannants/UK, *Mister Kit/Italy, *Revi (publisher)/Czech Republic, *SkyGrid/Canada, *Roll Models/USA, *Great Models Webstore/USA, *FlightDecs/Canada, *Victory Models/USA
*M & Models/USA, *
Zed Hobbies/Australia, *AB &S Enterprise/Australia, *Desert Miniature/USA 

Decal Sheets

I highly recommend these decals to anyone interested in P-47s. 

I would like to thank Lifelike Decals for providing me with this review sample.

Steve  

Steve BamfordPhotos and text © by