The Atom Furnace: Bald Eagle - 1/48 scale P51B, On the bench Sept. 11, 2020

It is the 19th anniversary of 9-11 - moment of silence..............I am still waiting for the decals for the P36 of PJ Phil Rasmussen, so I go to the storage box and pull out a 1/48 P51 that my father and not my brother had built. I am not sure of the age of the model, but it is in relatively good condition and decals look solid and not faded. It needs a cleaning, and by the look of it, some touching up, but nothing major. It is something to do while waiting for decals. This is the P51 as it came out of storage.

Looks pretty good, but up close it needs some sprucing up. My first issue is the olive color on the wings and fuselage. I think it is what showed on the kit box cover since after a little research I found other kits, some with the olive. However; I did some research on the "Bald Eagle" itself. The current Bald Eagle is alive and well, although a P51D, it is painted as the Bald Eagle except the color is the dark Navy blue as was the original P51B Bald Eagle of the 361st Fighter Group that straffed and bombed on Normandy, June 6, 1944.

The conversion to blue begins. Originally that color area was white and black stripes like the underside and fuselage. Many of you WWII aircraft history buffs will recognize the stripes (which I recently learned about) that distinguished allied aircraft ("If it ain't got stripes, shoot it down"). The topsides got repainted later as a camoflage effort but the underside remained striped.

The wings are now in the Navy blue, but this photo shows two things. First is the conversion of the initial "birdcage" canopy of the P51B to the "Malcolm Hood" that the P51B/Cs received in order to increase the pilots all around view. The Malcolm Hood was developed by the RAF for the Spitfire and others. The second reason for the pic is the 8 white circles within which there should be little Swastikas for the eight victories of the Bald Eagle. The circles were too stark for me. I had to try something.

While not really Swas. one can interpret as such if you don't look too hard! One other thing to notice is the condition of the white stripes on the fuselage. Cleaning attempts failed and paint is required. I will attack that later. As I stated about the advantage of the Malcolm Hood, many pilots preferred them over the later Bubble canopies of the P51D; However the Ds advantage was it had 6 - 50Cal guns in the wings as opposed to 4 in the P51B/C - which also liked to jam; however, that issued was remedied later.

But first I had to add four 50 Cals to Dad's P51, since all I saw were holes in the wing edge!!! What to do? Well back to a previous kit sprue. Note the ends of the prop shafts of my USS England that were not used. They were the perfect size.

Here the prop shafts have been snipped and trimmed and "guns" have been glued in Place. Paint comes later. Let's move along.....

..........This is the tail number of the original Bald Eagle in 1944, flown by Robert Eckfeldt of the 374th Squadron of the 361st Fighter Group. Note the blue and yellow stripes. These had to be carefully touched up with the Navy blue and fresh coat of yellow (this was a decal that was a bit lopsided).

The same was required for the wing tips.

The nose yellow was also "freshened up" as this was the nose of the 361st Fighter Group known as the "Yellowjackets". The one thing I did not mess with is the blue/yellow decals above the exhaust manifold. They are in perfect condition. In this pic notice the guns are painted as well as the exhaust manifolds, as they were a mite "rough" looking.

Recall I mentioned earlier about the white stripes? Besides needing a freshen up, the Star on the fuselage is supposed to be centered on the middle of the three white stripes. I think that the fuselage stripes maybe slightly narrow and too far forward, combined with the placement of the decals over the stripes, creating a difference in the white of the star portion (over the black stripe) since it is not centered on the white. My first attempt at a solution, after touchup/repaint of the white stripes, will be to touchup the star also. Should I totally FUBAR the look, then I will have to start over and try and order new decals - which I would rather not do!! The plot thickens!

I got my new white paint. It was nice and thin and allowed me to push it around where I wanted and even wipe off, which I did at first until I refined the technique. It turned out OK!