1/48 Eduard P-400 Airacobra

by Alan Williamson on Oct 19 2003

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History 

The P-39 started service with Britain ordering 675 P-39s in April 1940. These were known as British Airacobra MK.I’s. The P-39D as they were had their engine-axis cannon replaced with a British Hispano M1 20mm cannon as well as the wing mounted cannon being replaced with 7.7mm Browning’s. Britain first received its Airacobra’s MK.I’s in July 1941, however the RAF found that Airacobra’s were not suitable for service in the European Theater, Thus after October 1941 they were withdrawn from service with the RAF, and 212 RAF Airacobra’s were sent to serve with the Russian air force.  

When The USA came into the war they took back 179 Airocobras from the British order on the production line and were then re-designated to become P-400, which served in the Pacific war. One of the significant changes from the P-39D to the P-400 was the exhaust pipe with the P-400 having 12 exhaust tubes on each side.  An Alison V-1710-35 with 1150 hp powered the P-400.

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The Kit 8061 

Eduard has put together a fantastic kit with excellent detail both within the cockpit area and abroad for the external fuselage and wings. Eduard also does a Porfipack of a think a P-39 but you can build a P-400 out of the same kit. This particular kit comes with many extra parts to make up other P-39 series aircraft. Also included a ballast to hold the nose down as well as Eduard's Express mask. The only major thing that this kit is missing that the other Porfipack has is the Eduard Zoom set for the cockpit and external fuselage and wings.  The instructions include a paint guide that is in some ways above other model companies with a list of color references for Tamiya, Humbrol, Revell, Testors and Aermaster paints, so the modeler can get the exact color to which the real P-400 would have been. The decals included with the kit are nice and thin so you can go easy on the decal solution; a few different squadron decals are included.  

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Construction

This kit was built OOB apart from the seat belts and antenna wire, the seat belts were from the Eduard USAF seat belt set. This is what I found a little strange the Profipack comes with seat belts and Eduard makes seat belt racks for most aircraft, but can not include any seat belts with this kit. Getting back the construction of the kit, this kit is relatively easy to assemble with straight forward instructions some putty and sanding was required but not much, probably the hardest part in assembling this kit is setting up the propeller blades, the only other thing that I have to have a bitch about and it has been mentioned on other articles on the Eduard P-400 is the doors.....you can’t display this model with either of the door closed, because there is a big gap that appears at the top of the doorframes when closed.

Painting and Finish 

I used Humbrol paints to finish this P-400 off and the decals are that of Wahl Eye II, flown by Lt. Eugene Wahl on the island of New Guinea in 1942. I added some chips to the paint and a pastel wash to grim it up, and that was that. 

Photos

The Photos were taken with a Canon digital camera, which in close up shots picked up the dust specs. 

Alan

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Photos and text © by Alan Williamson