1/48 Accurate Miniatures P-51B

'Topper III'  

by Kevin Hayes on Sept 2 2003

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I am a big fan of flashy WW2 fighters, and not too many came more colorful than this, ‘Topper III‘, a P-51B Mustang of the 99th FS, 332nd FG, better known as the ‘Tuskegee Airmen‘. Without going into a full-blown history lesson, suffice it to say those men did a bang up job during the war. To build this Mustang, I used Accurate Miniatures’ 1/48 P-51B, and I dressed her in AeroMaster decals. The kit is beautiful, sporting great fit, good accuracy, and great detail out of the box. I built mine almost out of box, with a few minor details added.

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 Construction went fairly easily, the only bumps in the road being because of my own goof-ups. The kit has good accuracy, but if you are a Mustang purist or just more accuracy-minded, there are a couple of areas that may need attention. A few mods I made to my Mustang are: 

  •  Added aileron fairings on top and bottom of each wing

  •  Added formation lights, top and bottom of each wing

  • Opened and detailed the canopy

  •  Scratch-built seatbelts and buckles

  • Dropped the elevators

  •  MV Lenses landing light

  • Gun camera sight drilled out

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Finishing the model in a natural metal finish, I decided I wanted to try something other than Testors’ Chrome Silver so I picked up some Alclad II. If you haven’t heard already, let me be the one to tell you this stuff kicks butt! I finished my Mustang with Highly Polished Aluminum, so I had to first spray a primer of gloss black, also supplied by Alclad. You only have to use the primer when spraying Highly Polished Aluminum or Chrome Silver, so other colors are even easier to use. The stuff comes ready to airbrush right out of the bottle and literally dries in minutes, I highly recommend you try this stuff!

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Aeromasters’ decals, sheet 48-224, sealed the deal. I sprayed some of the decals with a flat coat, then trimmed away the clear carrier film and applied them over the unsealed Alclad, I find this is the best way to do it. A bit of MicroSol was needed to get the nose checkers to settle around those compound curves, but the decals otherwise went on very nicely.

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To weather ‘Topper III‘, I used several techniques: 

  • silver color pencil

  •  Pigma Micron 005 Ink Pen

  •  black chalk

  •  burnt raw umber wash

  • dry brushing 

This was a fun build, and the finished model is stunning in my little display case. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

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Additions 

  • AeroMaster decals, sheet 48-224, ‘Tuskegee Airmen’

  •  MV Lenses

  • CMK Nav Lights 

References

  • Detail and Scale Vol. 50 P-51 Mustang Part 1, By Bert Kinzey.

  • Detail and Scale Vol. 51 P-51 Mustang Part 2, By Bert Kinzey.

  • North American P-51 Mustang, Osprey Modeling, By Rodrigo Cabos and Geoff Coghlin.

  • P-51 Mustang Action!, from the publishers of Flight Journal.

 Kevin

Photos and text © by Kevin Hayes