Mauve 1/48 P-40M Warhawk

I’ll spare the intro about the P-40M as MM has many fine articles that go into depth about the combat history of the P-40 and just go to the history of the pilot whose markings are the subject of this particular kit.

From Article

Jack Bade was born Oct. 9, 1920, to Charles and Gladys Bade.  He graduated from Elk River High School in 1938. After a year and a half studying mechanical engineering at the University of Minnesota, he took a war job with the Minneapolis Honeywell Corp., manufacturers of instruments vital to the war effort, but he was not satisfied to make equipment for planes.

Bade enlisted in the Air Corps in January 1942 and was sent to Luke Field, Ariz., for training. Bade was given his pilot's rating as a second lieutenant on June 25, 1942, and assigned to active duty the following day.

Almost immediately he was shipped to Hawaii. Six weeks later he went to the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific where for 11.5 months he was in the thick of fighting that marked the turning point of the war with Japan.

His first presidential citation was the Distinguished Service Cross awarded for acts of "extraordinary heroism" over the Solomon Islands on Feb. 13, 1943.

That day Bade and five other pilots were escorting six B-24 bombers on a bombing mission over Bougainville Island, which was then firmly held by the Japanese. The small formation was jumped by a pack of 45 Japanese Zeros.

"They followed us back for the whole 150 miles, destroying three of our fighters and three of our B-24s and disabling another fighter," Bade told the Republic Aviation News. "Only two of us really got back with the three bombers. Our group got 12 of the Zeros, and maybe more - we didn't have much time to count - but I think I only knocked down one."

Bade's plane was hit repeatedly by airplane and antiaircraft fire and was nearly destroyed. He arrived at his base with his fuel supply almost exhausted.

Then came June 5, 1943.  Bade was the pilot of a P-40 in the 44th Fighter Squadron during aerial combat against enemy Japanese air forces in the Solomon Islands area that day.

What happened next was summarized in a citation Bade received.

"While leading part of a fighter sweep preceding a bombing raid on hostile shipping in the Shortland-Kahili area, First Lieutenant Bade fought back desperately against intercepting Zeros which struck from behind and below. When his crippled wingman fell off in a smoking dive, he followed him down until his own plane was tailed by four Japanese fighters whose disintegrating fire riddled his wings and fuselage and jammed his guns. Immediately afterward, although bleeding profusely from a deep head wound, he flew to the defense of several of our bombers which had been stripped of fighter cover and were being attacked by a swarm of Zeros. Undeterred by complete lack of fire power and suffering great pain, he put his damaged plane through a series of headlong passes with such formidable aggressiveness that the Japanese airmen broke off their fight and fled. His heroic perseverance and superb flying skill were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service."

According to the Republic Aviation News article, there was even more to the story.

When wounded that day, Bade was fighting at 23,000 feet, trying to save his wingman. Suddenly tracer bullets streaked past him, then all went black.

When he recovered consciousness he had fallen about 17,000 feet. His plane was riddled and blood was streaming from the back of his head. It was in this condition, as well as with his guns out of commission, that Bade launched the attack which drove away the 10 Japanese Zeros and saved the Navy bomber formation.

Bade succeeded in getting back to his base, where it was determined that a Japanese bullet had struck the top edge of his armor plate and either a part of the bullet or a splinter from the armor plate had pierced his head.

When the Republic Aviation News reporter asked Bade how long he was hospitalized, Bade replied: "Oh, I didn't go to the hospital. They took the pieces out, shaved the back of my head, and we flew a four-hour mission the next day."

On June 30, 1943, Bade destroyed his fifth Zero - which made him an ace.

In late 1943, Bade was assigned to Republic by the Army Air Force. At Republic he was in charge of coordinating the entire P-47 inspection and flight test program in the Evansville, Ind., area and actual test flying of Thunderbolt fighters for acceptance by the Army. After Bade's discharge from the service in 1946, he joined Republic's civilian test force.

In 1949, Bade survived a 500-mph crash of his jet plane by bailing out at 12,000 feet.

He was killed 14 years later while testing a F-105 jet fighter over the Catskill Mountains in New York state. He collided with a plane piloted by his close friend, Don Seaver, while they were going two times the speed of sound.

All text taken from an article by Joni Astrup and edited slightly.

The Mauve kit was made in 1995 and considered one of the best P-40s in 1/48 scale.  It consists of two sprues of dark olive plastic and one sprue of clear parts including the lights.  The detail is pretty good for the time (except the cockpit) and the wheel wells.  There is a touch of flash so cleanup is required.

For more detail, see DaBoss’ preview of the similar N.

Like most airplane models, it begins with the cockpit.  The Mauve cockpit is rather basic, especially the seat.  I replaced the kit seat with a leftover Ultracast P-40 seat (two per set) from another build.  The cockpit parts (except the console) were painted using Xtracrylix US Interior Green and then brush painted and drybrushed to get a dirty, worn look to them.  I painted the console flat black and then carefully dry brushed the details using Citadel Bone White.

I assembled the wings next,  One of the things that makes building a P-40 model a pain in the rear is that the machine gun blast tubes are usually in the way of the wing seams so one has to make a choice to carefully deal with the seam carefully or simply remove and replace the original blast tubes.  I chose the latter as one of the things I had purchased was a set of brass P-40 blast tubes from Master Details as I wanted to try them out and the Mauve blast tubes aren’t all that well detailed.  Turns out, I should have listened to the old engineer adage of measure twice cut once when I cut off the original plastic blast tubes and drilled out the holes with a 1/8” bit because I wasn’t careful to line up the gaps between the guns equally so starboard wing has a rather tight grouping of blast tubes and the port wing is more spaced out.  Oops.  Plus, in my haste of drilling out the original blast tubes, I removed more plastic than I should have.  #&^$$&!!!  All the usual gap filling stuff wouldn’t really work so I ended up using some leftover drywall mud aka plaster to fill the interior of the wing so that the blast tubes would stay in place then while the plaster was wet, stuck a brass tube to create the hole.  Once it was dry, I covered the plaster areas along the leading edge with CA glue as the plaster doesn’t do well with wet sanding.  Lots of filling, sanding and swearing later, I finally had a smooth rounded leading edge of the wings and then I glued all six brass blast tubes into the wings.  Unfortunately, the holes were a little to large for the blast tubes and I had to first fill then carefully sand (many many times) the area around the blast tubes till they were okay to me.

Next I assembled the fuselage including the intake which was painted interior gree.  This proved to be a bit more of a hassle than I thought especially the fuselage wing join.  Fresh off the shame of my fight with the Eduard FW190-D9 wings which might have been easier to deal with if I had read my own review of the earlier FW190-A8, I decided to read up on any reviews of the Mauve P-40M.  It turns out Tom Cleaver had some clever suggestions to deal with them.  I measured and cut two pieces of sprue to spread the fuselage out so that I would not have to deal with some rather ugly gaps between the wing and fuselage.

One complication that arises from that is the piece just behind the cockpit needs additional support as the fuselage becomes too wide.  I had to cut several pieces of sprue to provide something for it to rest on.  That piece was then painted Tamiya Flat Green and then the clear piece was added.  I only glued that clear piece along the bottom with Tamiya Clear Glue as I needed to deal with the vertical seam.  One of my own personal bugaboos with the P-40 is that I always forgot that there is no vertical seam between the clear piece and the fuselage.  This time I was actually going to deal with it.  The actual clear areas were masked off with tape to prevent the sand paper from scratching it.  It took several attempts before I got a smooth join that didn’t have gaps or CA glue lumps.  The area was carefully polished to remove any remaining scratches.

The prop was a bit more complex than I expected.  Mauve does not do what Hasegawa and Tamiya do by mounting the prop using a poly cap bushing.  Instead they use a styrene cap and recommend that you add the prop hub in during the fuselage assembly.  Having made that mistake once (and only once) I opted to glue the styrene cap on one side before gluing everything in place.  I cleaned out the hole so that the prop could fit.  The prop hub was painted flat while the prop blades were cleaned up and painted flat black.  Once dry, the prop tips were masked then painted flat white then yellow before they were glued onto the prop hub.  Next I dry brushed the prop leading edges silver to show wear.

The rest of the assembly was uneventful as it just involved letting the model sit around for a couple of weeks so that the glue cures (to eliminate phantom seams) and then filling/sanding those seams.

Painting

I opted to build Jack Bade’s “Reckless Prostitute” which was painted in the more interesting (to me) Aussie Foliage Green and Light Gray.

First the plane was painted using Tamiya Chrome Silver and Talon Aluminum on the leading edges and around the engine just in case I wanted to show more chipped paint.  Next the underside was painted using Tamiya XF-80 Royal Light Gray.  Once it was dry, the demarcation lines and canopy bits were masked off and the top side was painted Tamiya XF-5 Flat Green (my “it’s close enough go to” green of choice) in several light coats to get a worn patchy look. I took a look at the Mauve decals that Scott had sent with the kit.  They were a lot like the Hasegawa decals with Ivory instead of white so I opted to use only the “Reckless Prostitute” decals and kill markings while using US insignia from the decals spares and painting the ID stripes.

I’ve pretty much given up on using decal stripes for most if not all curves and prefer (which goes against my lazy nature) to mask and paint them on.  I used Tamiya Flat White XF-2 for the color by the way.  The tail was masked off and painted white at the same time.  There were no surprises on that part except when I found a photo of the “Reckless Prostitute” that did not have the underside stripes.  It was too late to change it, but considering the rather fluid nature of the Solomon campaign it does not surprise me one way or another.

Once dry, I sprayed on a couple of light layers of Tamiya Clear coat for the decals.

The True Details resin wheels were painted with the same light grey, then masked using Tamiya tape cut with a knife and then painted in Dark Grey.

Decals

It was pretty simple as there were no maintenance stencils to add.  Woo!  The four US insignia which I took from an old Cutting Edge P-40 sheet were used while the Reckless Prostitute decals were taken from the old Mauve sheet.  The Mauve decals broke, but did not disintegrate but I still used them as I carefully pieced them together on the model.  I used MicroSet initially and Solvaset when they silvered.

Weathering

This is one of the more enjoyable weathering jobs I have done.  I first post shaded areas with RLM81 (I was touching up another model at the time) where there the walkways would be.  Next I used a mix of 50% flat white and 50% XF-5 flat green for sun fading.  Next up was dark gray for exhaust and soot stains.  Certain areas like leading edges and walkways were dry brushed with silver and chrome yellow (primer) to show damage.  In what can be described as a happy accident, the masking tape also lifted up the top paint layers to show paint chipping as well.  I used a tooth pick dipped in silver paint to create a chipped paint effect and unpainted fasteners around the engine area.

Next I went with a dark watercolor wash of raw umber and burnt sienna to dirty everything up.  Once dry the excess was removed with damp Q-Tips.

I used the Tamiya weathering set for the gunfire stains.

Lastly, I took a thin brush with some Vallejo Yellow Ochre and made very thing and very light streaks in random spots on the sides of the P-40 to make it look rain streaked.  I didn’t do too much, but enough to be noticed.  Normally I do this with armor, but I wanted to try it out on an aircraft this time.

FYI, the wheels were weathered in the same way.

This was easier to type than to actually do.  It took about 3 hours of intense work to get it right.

Once done, I sprayed on Vallejo Flat coat for the final coat.

The antenna post hole was drilled, the antenna post was added and I used repair thread for the wire (held on with CA glue.)  The pitot tube, landing gear parts, exhausts, various door parts, tail wheel and lights were painted, weathered and glued in place as per instructions.  Next the True Details resin wheels were glued on using CA glue.

Lastly, I wet some toilet paper and shoved it into the wheel wells.  Once dry, I cut out the impressions and painted them tan then weathered them a lot to make them dirty.  I glued them back into the wheel wells to represent the canvas wheel well covers used in P-40Ms.

The Mauve P-40M is a rather simple model to assemble, but it does have its issues that need to be fixed before putting it all together such as the wing to fuselage join and the leading edge around the gun blast tubes.

Add in some aftermarket upgrades to its weak points and it makes for a very nice model.