**** DONE: 1/48 P-38J Lightning 44-23675 "Les Vin, Les Femmes, et Les Chansons"

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Thanks Guys

Today I painted the anti-glare panels. These areas are a bit tricky to mask as the metalized can be easily pulled up by Tamiya tape. There are a couple of different options such as wet paper to avoid damaging the finish, but in this case I used a product called "Ultra mask" which is a type of plastic mask designed for use with airbrushes. It is lower tack than Tamiya tape and it works a treat. Easy to cut to shape too.

As you can tell, the anti glare panels have been painted Olive Drab. The instructions and profiles I have found on the net all show matt black, but this I think would have been unusual. Looking at the photos I have of Les Vin, I suspect they were olive drab and this is consistent with other 485th birds and P-38J's in general.

Here's a good picture from Jay Jones's book "The 370th Fighter Group in World War II" and you can see that the anti glare panel look lighter than the black props and kill markings. Anyway, I made a D on this one. Drab it is.

Final pic is some artwork from the same book , but for a different bird of the 485th.


Cheers

Peter
 

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Thank you CR, Bruce, Karl, Wurger, Terry, Wayne and T Bolt!

More progress this weekend, although I've made a few mistakes getting overspray where I shouldn't.

Still I have most everything painted and I am just needing to do a few touch ups here and there.

Pic 1 I masked off the invasion stripes and painted these. The stripes were only on the bottom side of the booms and wings. Very fiddly getting the booms just so, particularly around the scoops.

Pic 2. The wing fillet colour is another contentious choice. The box art shows this area to be black, and I know other profiles in Osprey and with a decal set released by Aeromaster show this area as either black or dark blue. In the book on the 370th (Jones) though, many were actually painted red. Looking at the photos I have of Les Vin, I certainly don't think they were black.

Pic 3 Many of the 485th ships were actually red in this area. Here is a colour shot of Mary Rose II taken from Jones, but there were others, including "My Little Pig", "Buzz Boy", "Mutt". I'm going for the red anyways.

Pic 4. Red it is. I did manage to get a bit of red overspray on the OD panels and other places. I'll need to go back and fix this up tomorrow.

Pic 5 The rear of the spinners and front of the cowl were gloss red. The spinner nose cap was a dark blue colour, and I'll add this very soon.

End of update.

Cheers

Peter
 

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