P-51D Mustang "Aces of the Eighth" Dual Combo
Eduard has provided IPMS/USA reviewer corps with a 1/72nd scale Limited Edition P-51D Mustang “Aces of the Eighth” Dual Combo kit. In WWII, The Eighth Air Force (aka: Mighty Eighth) earned a reputation as a great warfighting organization. From May 1942 to July 1945, they flew over Nazi-occupied Europe and complied an impressive war record which included 566 Aces (261 fighter pilots with 31 having 15 or more victories and 305 enlisted gunners).
This kit has markings for twelve (12) P-51D Mustang Aces for you to choose from. The hardest part may be choosing which two (2) you will want to build.
In the Box
There are two (2) complete kits in this boxing and it is encased in a beautifully illustrated top open box. The tooling is brand new for this scale and created in 2024.
There are six (6) gray sprues, two (2) clear sprues, two (2) sets of photo-etched sheets, one (1) large decal sheet for the Aces, and two (2) decal sheets for air frame data/stencils.
Decals include the following aircraft:
- P-51D-5, s/n 44-13321, HO*, “CRIPES A´MIGHTY 3rd”, Maj. George E. Preddy Jr., 487th FS, 352nd FG, Bodney, UK, July 1944. Blue nose and black & white ID invasion stripes on wings and fuselage
- P-51D-10, s/n 44-14221, WD*A, “RIDGE RUNNER”, Maj. Pierce W. McKennon, 335th FS, 4th FG, Debden, UK, April 1945. Red nose and white rudder with red trim
- P-51D-10, 44-14733, CS*L, “Daddy´s Girl”, Capt. R. S. Wetmore, 370th FS, 359th FG, East Wretham, UK, March 1944. Green nose and blue rudder
- P-51D-20, 44-72218, WZ*I, “Big Beautiful Doll”, Lt Col. John D. Landers, CO of 78th FG, Duxford, UK, March 1945. Checkered nose and black rudder
- P-51D-5, 44-13316, G4*C, “Nooky Booky II”, Leonard K. Carson, 362nd FS, 357th FG, USAAF Station 373 Leiston, Suffolk, UK, June 1944. Red/yellow checked nose, olive drab upper surfaces and black & white ID stripes under fuselage
- P-51D-15, 44-15152, QI*T, “Jersey Jerk”, Maj. Donald Strait, 361st FS, 365th FG, UK. Red and blue-checkered nose and blue rudder
- P-51D-10, 44-14223, CL*M, “KATYDID”, Lt. Col. Elwyn G. Righetti, CO of 55th FG, Wormingford, UK, January 1945 with a green/yellow checkered nose and green rudder
- P-51D-10, 44-14164, E2*D, “Detroit Miss”, Lt. U. L. Drew, 375th FS, 361st FG, Little Walden, UK, October 1944. Yellow nose and black & white ID stripes under fuselage
- P-51D-5, 44-13761, MC*I, “Happy Jack´s Go Buggy”, Capt. Jack M. Ilfrey, 79th FS, 20th FG, USAAF Station 367 Kings Cliffe, UK, autumn 1944. Olive drab upper surfaces and black and white nose,
- P-51D-10, 44-14372, 5Q*E, “Mary Beth”, Capt. Kirk B. Everson, 504th FS, 339th FG, Fowlmere, UK, April 1945. Red/white checked nose and green rudder
- P-51D-5, 44-13677, OS*X, “Miss Steve”, Lt. William G. Cullerton, 357th FS, 355th FG, Steeple Morden, UK, 1944. Blue nose and rudder, white spinner, black & white ID stripes under fuselage
- P-51D-25, 44-73060, LH*X, “Dove of Peace”, Col. Glenn E. Duncan, 350th FS, 353rd FG, Raydon, UK, April 1945. Black/yellow checkered nose and yellow rudder.
All the Mustangs are eye catching in color, however, each airplane will require a base coat of aluminum before applying the other colors.
Review Process
The first thing that must be decided before cutting parts is to decide on what airplane to build. This is required since there will be efforts to cut away, fill areas, and specific parts to certain P-51D models (-5, -10, -15, -25).
Construction begins in cockpit floor, sidewalls, seat, and radio area. The instrument panel will be later down the road. If you want seat belts, PE is the only way to go since there are no decal seat belts. Painting this area will require some close-in detail painting and a fine tipped paint brush will help.
Sidewalls are installed to the fuselage along with the aft tail-wheel compartment. Prior to gluing the fuselage halves together, radiator components will be installed along with engine exhaust stack supports and the tail rudder. Due to the angle of the molds separating after styrene injection, some rivet detail is lost at the centerline seam edge over the engine cowling and aft of the cockpit. To remedy this, a riveting tool (wheel, punch, or needle) will be needed to recreate the fastener pattern.
Next up is the wheel well compartment in the wing. It is a “boxed in” assembly and the instructions have you installing the landing light currently. I chose to wait to install the light till the very end knowing this would be a part I would break off due to its location a fragility.
Wing assembly is next and note on page 6 (depending on what plane you are doing) there is a step to fill some access panel lines or scribe a new one with the help of the PE sheet jig. After this, the wing is installed to the fuselage along with the ailerons and horizontal stabilizers.
Now is the part of cockpit instrument panel assembly. Eduard gives you a choice of using PE or plastic parts with raised detail along with decals. For this review, I went with the PE parts. Everything went together well using CA as the bonding agent and it is a “drop in” design. Very ingenious by the Eduard designers and makes life easier for the builder.
After this, the radiator intake and horizontal stabilizers were installed and I then proceeded to paint.
I primer coated everything with Mr. Surfacer 1200 gray and fixed any seam line issues revealed. After this, I used Alclad White Aluminum as the overall metallic color and Alclad RAF High Speed Silver for the upper and lower wing surfaces. Left to dry over night the decals were next.
The decals are the new versions where the carrier film can be removed given time to dry overnight. This was my first attempt with this type of decal. Prior to application, I looked at several tutorial videos on YouTube which were very helpful. The tricky part of the whole process is when removing the clear carrier film.
For this build, I used the tip of an Exacto blade and poster tack to remove the carrier film. The lower wing roundel was my test subject and it was a disaster learning experience. I destroyed the decal when removing the film.
My second try was much better and I was able to keep almost all of it on the surface where about 5% was lifted on the film. The other roundels had similar results on the upper wing and fuselage. I did use Micro Set and Micro Sol when applying these decals. For the areas where the decal lifted, I was able to touch up finish with Vallejo acrylics. A learning experience, indeed, but with practice will produce nice results.
For the other areas of markings, I used Solvaset as the top coat solvent. This had a much “tighter” grip on the clear film to the surface and it was much harder to get the film to lift off. So, out of fear of ripping the under decal, I left the clear film as is since it conformed nicely to the surface and recessed into the panel lines and rivet holes. Also, the Solvaset made the clear film disappear once dry.
The airframe data/stencils decals (and there are A LOT of them) came off the backing paper immediately after getting wet. So, be prepared to apply these decals to the surface soon after immersion. Some of these decals are very tiny and because of this, I chose to leave some off since you will not be able to see them without an Opti-visor.
Once the decals were allowed to dry overnight, I sprayed a coat of Vallejo Clear Satin. Next was a subtle application of some weathering using ground up charcoal. This was followed up with AK Ultra Matt Clear Varnish to seal it all in.
After this, installing the landing gear was an exercise in patience. The instructions have you first install the outer bay doors to the struts. Based on my past MLG installs, I decided to install the struts first. The fit of the strut into the wing is rather loose and will require an overnight curing session to allow the glue to dry. Eduard does provide a side & front profile in the instructions to show you how the MLG should align. The next day, I trimmed off the upper door locating tab and it installed nicely to the struts other locating pins.
Finally, I installed the canopy, flaps, antenna mast, and pitot probe and called it good.
There was one area of problem I ran into. It was the fuel/bomb hardpoint attach point. The upper mounting tabs on the fuel tanks (Parts F9, F24, F29 & F30) do not fit into the slots of the hard point (Parts F20 & F21). Seems like the hard point slots are a 1-2 mm to wide to accept the fuel tank tabs. Maybe Eduard can relook at this area to see about fixing this part of the mold. But if you want to have fuel tanks, more effort will be required to attach them since they currently do not fit.
Conclusions
This is my first Eduard P-51D Mustang I have built in any scale and it was a “mixed-bag” experience. I have built other 1/72nd scale P-51D kits from Hasegawa, Tamiya, Revell, Ko-Pro, and Airfix. This beats all of them in the molded detail and some engineering aspects. The assembly, however, required more patience. This is due to installing PE and careful assembly since some parts require a more precise fit and the landing gear is very fiddley to get the right alignment. But overall, this is one AWESOME kit to build and I believe all levels of builders will enjoy this kit, especially given the twelve (12) choices in decal markings. “Check fit twice, glue once.”
I want to thank Eduard for providing this wonderful dual combo kit and IPMS/USA for allowing me the opportunity to review.
Highly Recommend to EVERYONE!
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