Well wouldn't you know it, I played with that Corsair FOR YEARS and eventually my dad started building me other 1/144th models to add to the fleet and create huge airshows on our table top in the basement. Sometimes he would use the decals straight out of the box, while other times he would give them custom paint jobs. Like painting "Shangri-La" freehand on a Revell P-51B! Probably to match his 1/32nd example. Eventually I asked him if he could repaint the Corsair from its overall light blue paint scheme into an example that was still flying. A warbird example that we had both seen at the local airshow in Stratford that year. Well one thing led to another and I eventually had my own "Skyboss"!
Some years later I decided to jump in head first at customizing, and got my hands on a Revell P-40E and did some free hand painting for myself to recreate my favorite P-40 flying at that time, Dr. Bill Anderson's authentically painted P-40E that he based at the National Warplane Museum in Geneseo, NY. At the time the only other P-40 in 1/144th scale was the grossly misshapen Crown P-40N so I was ecstatic to find a more accurate example. But as the years went by, those "first edition" planes were retired in favor of all the F-Toys, Big Bird, Bandai, and other kits to come out that blew all the old Mitsuwa, Revell, Crown, Minicraft, etc kits away. Thus they were put into storage.
Fast forward to a few months ago...
I was over my parent's house and pulled the P-51B and Corsair out that my father had hand painted back in the day. I decided that these two beauties from a bygone era deserved to be resurrected along with the P-40 that I hand painted. I decided I was going to restore some Warbirds!
This is what I basically started with. The Mitsuwa Corsair is a -1 birdcage and the vacuform canopy that my father had made was just that. But Skyboss was a FG-1D and it needed a new canopy.
This -4 canopy from a F-toys will do the trick! I realized only afterwards that the AFV-Club models come with two spare canopies and I would have probably used one of them instead. I did grab a spare prop and it worked out quite well!
I eventually built up a rear turtle deck behind the canopy area and carefully added putty where necessary and underneath the canopy. I painted the interior and glued the canopy in place with krystal clear.
Now we're getting somewhere! What's interesting to note is that my father actually mixed up (understandably) two Corsairs into one model. In 1996 (If I remember correctly) we had an airshow at the Sikorsky Airport where Ed Shipley flew in his Corsair Bu. 88303 aka "Marines 22".
The following year Bu. 67089 aka "Skyboss" came instead.
So I decided (since Skyboss was only painted on the port side) that I would correct only that side to make it "Skyboss" and leave the starboard side as Shipley's "22". I found a small enough "Marines" in my decal envelope and used it to further detail out the starboard side.
I painted over the "22" on the port side, added the "555", and borrowed a set of kill markings. I also carefully hand painted the tiny yellow emblem forward of the kill markings. I touched up the blue as best I could with the closest matching blue I had. I added a mast and pitot tube. Using a Bandai set of gear as reference, I ended up scratch building all of the landing gear, doors, and tailhook. I found a spare set of wheels in the parts box that looked the part.
The white underside had yellowed and required to be completely repainted. This picture shows that pesky star still showing up. Took a few coats. A new star was eventually added to the bottom wing. After a little more touch ups, I am very close to finishing this one up. I need to coat the entire plane with semi-gloss and maybe add some wires. But otherwise I'm feeling pretty good with this one.
In actuality the first in this series I started fixing up, was my P-40E. I had the original landing gear and just needed to add some stars on the underside of the wings, and add prop blurs. Sounds easy right? Well now I know I can do a little more to make this P-40 stand out. The goal is to make a mast, pitot tube, gear doors, new tail gear, coat the entire thing in clear flat matte, maybe add wires, and swap out the plaque with the updated one.
The last is the P-51B. This one is proving to be a challenge. The original idea was to have all three have prop blurs, but eventually I figured that would be more work than necessary, so I opted out. I covered the original stars with newer, "crisper" ones, and found a spare Revell P-51B spinner / prop (left over from my P-51A conversion). I had one of the original landing gear but had to scratch build the other one. I still need a canopy in case anyone has one! I also still need to touch up the green and grey, make a pitot tube, add the white bands on the wings, maybe add the numbers on the tail, and clear coat it in semi-gloss.
Again I know none of these models are going to win any awards. And I guess that was never the point really. I just wanted to give these older models a nice retirement themselves after all the hours of fun they gave me. I'll take better photos of all three when everything is done. Who knows... maybe I'll go through some of the other older kits and see what's worth restoring. Hope you liked the report! Stay tuned!
