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October 1941 they were withdrawn from service with the RAF, and 212 RAF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.
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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