This is the kit I was really looking forward to in the shipment from Dora Wings, given the good job they did on the P-43, and I haven't been disappointed.
The kit is issued as the Swedish J-9. As issued it makes up into one of the planes used for neutrality enforcement during the war, with the oversized Swedish markings provided on a very nice decal sheet.
I, however, had other game in mind with this kit.
The P-35A was distinct from the original P-35 in having additional armament in the form of a .50 caliber machine gun in each wing to supplement the two .30 caliber weapons in the nose. Originally, the Swedes order 120 of these improved P-35s in 1949, but only 60 were delivered before the reat were taken over by the US Army Air Corps in the fall of 1940. Most of the 60 airplanes were sent on to the Philippines in February 1941, to replace the ancient P-26s that the 17th and 3rd Pursuit Squadrons were operating at Clark Field. The airplanes arrived still equipped with their Swedish instrumentation and the erection manuals in Swedish. The first became operational in April.
As things progressed in the Far East during 1941, Japanese intentions toward the Philippines became clearer, and in the general rearmament, the Philippines were reinforced starting in August, when the first shipment of P-40Bs arrived, as well as the personnel of the 34th Pursuit Squadron. The 3rd PS got the P-40Bs, which didn't have oxygen or their .50 caliber nose guns. In September, P-40Es began arriving and were taken over by the 17th PS, who passed the P-35Bs on to the 34th PS. Through all of this, no pilot ever got training in shooting the guns his fighter was equipped with, due to a shortage of .50-caliber ammunition.
Among the pilots who arrived that summer was 2nd Lieutenant Lamar Gillet, who graduated from flight school in June and was assigned to the 17th squadron in September. As the most junior 2nd Lieutenant in the Philippines, he got to build time in the P-35 while the others learned the P-40E.
In October, the airplanes lost their prewar polished aluminum look, as the upper surfaces were spray painted with Olive Drab paint, "right over everything on the airplane, with no primer," as Lamar recalled. The Philippine monsoon doesn't end until around mid-November, and when one of the P-35s was flown through a rain storm "it came out looking like it had already been in a war" with the driving rain peeling off paint.
Lamar finally got to transit to the P-40E just before Thanksgiving, but he still liked the P-35A. When war came on December 8, the air force in the Philippines was quickly cut to pieces. On December 10, Lamar was included in the one group-size strike the 17th attempted, but his airplane was stolen by 1st Lt. Joe Kruzel; in the event, half the airplanes didn't come back, though Kruzel did because he had to abort with a bad engine.
On December 17, Lamar was sent to Iba Airfield to pick up a P-40E, but it had been destroyed by Japanese strafing an hour before he got there. Word came of a Japanese landing in Lamon Bay, and a call went out for volunteers to fly the airworthy P-35As in an attack on the invasion force. There were only four volunteers, including Lamar, and as it turned out only two of the P-35As would start, his and one flown by 1st Lt. John Anderson. The weather was poor and when they got off, Anderson kept trying to take wing position on Lamar, thinking he was the Captain who had been put in charge of the mission.
They arrived over Lamon Bay and found a very busy invasion going on. "We made one strafing pass, and Anderson's airplane took hits and he turned away." As Lamar climbed away from his strafing run, all of a sudden a Zero popped out of the cloud deck above, right in front of him. "I was really surprised. He didn't see me and I got on his tail and let him have it. I was so green I kept firing as I followed him down till he crashed in the bay just after I used up the last of my ammo." Lamar Gillet was the only P-35A pilot to ever shoot down an enemy airplane.
Back at base, things were still confused. Lamar barely missed being shot down by the anti-aircraft guns manned by the New Mexico National Guardsmen "they shot at everything that flew and were far more dangerous to us than the enemy was."
Eventually, Lamar and his P-35 ended up at Bataan air field, where the plane had an engine problem. He became an infantryman. Sometime after that, the airplane was fixed and taken by 1st Lieutenants Thomas J.J. Christian and Joe Kruzel, who flew it to Mindanao where they caught a B-17 that took them to Australia. Kruzel became leader of the Green Dragon Flight of the 49th Fighter Group while Christian eventually commanded the 67th Fighter Squadron at Guadalcanal, and both ended up after their Pacific tours in the 361st Fighter Group, where Kruzel succeeded to command after Christian was shot down over France in August 1944.
Lamar was one of "the battling b a s ta r d s of Bataan." He eventually survived the Bataan Death March and three years as a slave laborer in Japan.
For the 40 years after the war, Anderson was credited with having shot down the Zero, but the AFAA finally recognized Lamar's achievement in 1989 (but don't tell the Aviation Hystericalistory Hex-Spurtz, because the copy-and-pasters are still publishing Anderson as the victor as late as the Squadron In Action book on the P-35 back in 2003). I had the good fortune to meet Lamar when he came out to Planes of Fame in 1997 and did an interview with him that ended up an article in Flight Journal in 1999, and Lamar's story is told in full in my book "I Will Run Wild".
So, this P-35A is going to be made as what might have been the airplane Lamar was flying on December 17. Nobody knows what its number was, all Lamar knew was "it was the one that worked when I climbed in."
Fortunately, I was going to do his airplane with the Wolfpack re-release of the Hobbycraft P-35A, but when I found out Dora Wings was doing the kit, I put that on hold. The good news is, you can toss your Hobbycraft kits - at least if accuracy matters. This kit does everything right that the earlier kit does wrong. The extra parts Wolfpack included and the decal sheet for Philippines P-35As are real helpful though.
Like the MB 152, it's a "high-end/limited-run kit." Pay attention to the latter and you will achieve the former.
I used the Wolfpack details such as the photoetch seat and the seatbelts and the instrument panels to improve the very nice cockpit Dora Wings has here.
With care in cleaning up parts, the model assembles nicely if you take your time and test fit test fit test fit. I had to trim the elevators so they would fit to the horizontal stabilizer so I could droop them, sanding off just a bit of the inner edge to get things to open up enough to move them. The engine took some fitting and I ended up using Evergreen rod for details since the parts are really fragile and getting some of them off the sprue is close to impossible. If you do this, be sure to put that baggage compartment door on before attaching the fuselage halves together, because you have to trim it to fit and you want to be able to work it from both sides to get it right.
The wing and fuselage sub-assemblies fit nicely. I rubber banded the wing around the tops to bring it in tight against the upper fuselage joint. When it set, all was in proper position and I didn't have to use any filler. With care in assembly, I didn't have to use filler anywhere other than to fill the gap around the windscreen where it attaches to the fuselage.
More to come.
8 attached images. Click to enlarge.
