This is an old kit that Jo-Han released back in 1973. In that year I went out and bought their P-47 and enjoyed the build very much. At the time I felt it was the best P-47 in 1/72 scale. It has the option of building it in the razorback or bubble-top version. It is a clean kit with very little flash to remove, has recessed panel lines and comes with two drop tanks and 500 lbs bombs. The shape looks accurate to my eyes but it does lack details with just a seat for the cockpit and nothing for a wheel well.

2 attached images. Click to enlarge.

For this build I plan on making the P-47D Thunderbolt serial 42-26044 “Silver Lady” HV-Z of the 61st Fighter Squadron, 56th FG.

From what I have read, this is the first "Silver" P-47 in the European theater. I will be using decals from Techmod and my build will be finished on how it looked in May, 1944.

Silver Lady was flown by multiple pilots. Francis Gabreski managed to get 5 kills on this plane.

6 attached images. Click to enlarge.

The following photos show the scratch building process done for the cockpit.

The first shot shows the cockpit layout, just the seat. I used a cockpit taken from a Matchbox die-cast metal kit of the P-47 as the template to scratch build the cockpit on this build.

The next shot shows the measured pieces of styrene I cut from a sheet to match the cockpit template.

I added stretch sprue and pieces of styrene onto the sidewalls, rails for the seat, instrument panel with rudder pedals, reworked the seat that came with the kit and the cockpit floor.

I used a decal for the instrument panel, later I added another piece of cut styrene sheet onto the base of the instrument panel.

All of the pieces are done for the cockpit and the engine was painted and glued together. All of these are needed before gluing the fuselage halves together.

While the cockpit pieces were being worked on, I also started to build up the main gear's wheel wells.

3 attached images. Click to enlarge.

I used an exacto knife to lightly scribe the lines on the two pieces of cut styrene sheets used as the wheel wells ceiling. I also had to lightly file the wheel wells and scrape the upper wings inner surfaces to allow the wing halves to fir together without having a gap.

I glued on styrene pieces over the gun ejection ports for the spent .50 caliber casings and the base of the eight .50 cal guns.

4 attached images. Click to enlarge.

And here I added some pieces to widen the rear section of the fuselage so the rear spine (upper fuselage piece) base would sit correctly. If I left this alone, then the fuselage would look narrower than the base of the upper part of the fuselage.

1 attached image. Click to enlarge.

Excellent entry and really superb progress so far, my friend @v1pro! Loved all the scratch builds and corrections you be made so far.

Bob @v1pro , you are really improving this old kit with your extra work on it. The wheel well improvements are very impressive as is the work you did in the cockpit . Lots of modeling talent on display in this build.