1/48 Hasegawa P-38J Lightning

Gallery Article by Burt Gustafson on June 3 2010

 

For your viewing pleasure, here are some photos of my 1/48 scale Hasegawa P-38J Lightning. The P-38 Lightning was a superb long range World War II American fighter aircraft, designed and built by Lockheed Aircraft Corp. It was used in both Europe and the Pacific, but was the most successful in the Pacific Theater of Operations. 

The P-38J was introduced in August 1943. The final 210 "J" versions incorporated a set of electically-actuated dive recovery flaps just outboard of the engines on the bottom centerline of the wings. With these improvements, a USAAF pilot reported a dive speed of almost 600 mph.

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About The Kit: Not a bad kit overall. The parts fit was pretty good, although it did require some filling and sanding. The kit goes together easily, and the external detail is quite good. The cockpit has basic detail but most of it is hidden with a closed canopy. It was assembled and painted per instructions. The decals for this kit were not all that good. As one modeler mentioned in a gallery article, the decals were crumbly. Except for the decals, this was an out of the box build.

Painting: All of the paints used for this model were Model Master and Floquil enamels. Landing gears, wheel wells, and the insides of the landing gear doors were hand painted with Floquil Bright Silver to simulate bare metal. The underside of the model was airbrushed with Neutral Gray and the top side of the model was airbrushed with Olive Drab. Engine nacelles and spinners were airbrushed with Insignia Yellow.

Decals: For the model decals I used a combination of decals from the kit and decals from a Colorado Decals decal sheet. As previously mentioned, the kit decals were not all that good. When attempting to place the cockpit control panel decal, it broke into several pieces. Because of this I ordered a P-38 decal sheet from Colorado Decals that had decals that closely matched the kit decals. The tail, fuselage, national insignias, and some of the stencil decals are from the Colorado Decals sheet. About half the stencils are from the kit decal sheet. I chose to go with the color and markings for the 8th Air Force aircraft 978, 383 FIS, 384 FG, 1944. 

Conclusion: Except for the decal sheet, the kit was of good quality, typical of Hasegawa kits, and a pleasure to build. I was pleased with the finished model.

Burt Gustafson

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Photos and text © by Burt Gustafson