A tip o' the hat to @j-healy for revealing the fact that Wolfpack had re-released the Hobbycraft P-35A with some improvements. Ever since I met and interviewed Lamar Gillet, the P-35 pilot who shot down a Zero in the Philippines in December 1941, I have long wanted to do one of the 17th PS P-35As with his information on how they were repainted and what the result was - particularly since every single other researcher has gotten it wrong.
This one's going to be fully painted and decaled as a NMF prewar airplane, then overpainted with OD and then turned into one that flew through a few rainstorms - as Lamar put it, they painted the airplanes without primer, just before the end of the Philippines monsoon season, "After you flew through a rainstorm, it looked like you'd been to war." Nobody else ever talked to one of the guys who actually flew one.
You're going to have to put up with not getting your immediate gratification immediately, since an hour after this showed up in the mail I got an e-mail with the copy-edited manuscript of "Under The Southern Cross," which I have to edit/answer questions to by October 7. That's either going to be easy because I got it all right to begin with, or not.
However, in the end, there will be a clear path for all who follow to doing one of these airplanes the way they really were. (Do note the aluminum undersides of the color photo included here)
8 attached images. Click to enlarge.
