Hobby Craft 1/48 P-40B "Pearl Harbor Defender" (Kit No. HC1450) 1996
I know some modelers may disagree with me on saying this but I feel this is a pretty decent 1/48 scale kit of the P-40B. It builds up nicely and is an easy build but there were two areas that I felt that needed some attention:
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The belly's center-line fairing was too flat. I added cut plastic strips and putty to which was later filed and sanded to a more correct shape.
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The propeller blades were too wide, here I filed and sanded the leading and trailing edges of each blade.
I felt the cockpit details were decent, and the overall look was good to my eyes.
I used the kit's decals, it went on nicely but did not settle into some of the fine recessed panel lines.
The decals represent a Curtiss P-40B (H81-A-2), n.300 78th Pursuit Squadron, 18th Pursuit Group, Bellows Field, Hawaiian Islands, at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, 7.December 1941.
Nice work on this kit Bob (@v1pro). The use of the styrene strips is a nice correction on this issue with the kit. I'm curious about the styrene inserted in the nose piece. Can you expand on that? No criticism here, just curious about this particular change.
Thank you Carl @clipper. The styrene strip was added to move the forward chin piece down a little because without it I would have the lower aft part slightly larger if mated to the chin part. I don't remember if the fwd chin piece came that way or I cleaned off a bit more than the little flash that was on it, it was probably the latter.
Call it a Warhawk or a Tomahawk or whatever... I call it an excellent job on the completion, Bob.
Great modification with the belly fairing.
Thank you George @georgeswork. I am glad my approach on that belly fairing worked out. I've seen other methods to correct this by either using the lower section from the old Monogram's P-40B or cut the lower half of the fuselage and drop it slightly by angling it down to make the area fit better. This will also correct the panel line issues that this model has that I did not care to fix. I'll stick with my approach and enjoy the build. I have one more in my stash of this kit that I would like to do either in the Flying Tiger or RAF North Africa desert schemes.
Your extra work improved this kit, Bob @v1pro ! This is a great looking P-40……. a good one to post on December 7th !
Thank you Jay @ssgt! I am glad this fix made it look more correct. I really like this kit. I built this kit last year for our club meeting which held a Pearl Harbor Day theme. I waited for today to finally post this for that infamous day.
Excellent result and really great improvements, Bob!
Thank you Spiros @fiveten!
Well done, Carl.. Great post on this anniversary of the attack on Hawaii.
Thank you Gary @gwkat!
That's a nice build of one of the early defenders, Bob @v1pro
You did some amazing work on correcting the shape of the belly and the propeller, it worked out very well.
Well done.
Thank you John @johnb.
Nice work on that early P-40.
Thank you Chas @chasbunch.
Nice effort to raise the kit to a more true appearance, and a great-looking model.
Thank you very much Greg @gkittinger. 🙂 That little extra helps out a lot on the overall appearance.