I scored this Tamiya kit for half price at a craft store becuase the box was crushed. Luckily, none of the parts were damaged. I really enjoyed this kit. It is well detailed, but not over engineered. The fit was better than most and the model went together rather quickly. The kit provides two options: 1) the ever-popular "Little Cheif" flown by Lt. Frank Klibbe, and 2) "Spirit of Atlantic City, NJ" flown by Capt. Walker "Bud" Mahurin, both of the famous "Zemke's Wolfpack" 56 Fighter Group. I chose the second option because "Little Cheif" is a pretty common subject and I find Capt. Mahurin's story very compelling.
I built this kit pretty much straight out of the box. The only detail that I added was the wiring harness on the engine and the seat belts. The paint scheme was the common ETO scheme (OD over Neutral Gray) with the white ID stripes - rather bland but the Razorback is so cool it doesn't need a pretty paint job to be impressive. However, I still wanted to add some depth to the product, so I used some heavy blending of various shades of pastelle chalks into the paint to simulate fading, repairs and exhaust, as well as some heavy drybrushing of alluminum for paint chipping. I think the effect came out quite subtle and realistic.
I chose to load the model with a bomb and some air-to-ground rockets; probably not a common loadout for Capt. Walker's aircraft, but the 56 FG at the time was experimenting with ground attack tactics and I wanted to highlight the P-47s ground attack capabilities. Overall, this was a great subject and a good kit to get me back into the mode of modeling. I honestly can't stop looking at it.
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