this is a little out of place on these boards, but i rarely do aircraft. plus, i rarely go to aeroscale because those boards seem a little dormant.
but, i figured i would share this project ive been working on at the same time as my africa dio for the urban warfare campaign.
in 1996, i had graduated marine corp bootcamp and had come home for the first time to see family. my grandfather, being a naval veteran from korea, was obviously proud. But, there was my grandmothers brother, wilbert "weep" a great uncle i believe is what he would be) that was also proud. he went through a book that he had showing me the planes he flew in ww2 over europe.
i distinctly remember the p51 he showed me mainly because its an icon of air warfare. he also piloted the P47 prior to the mustang being available for use.
i didnt really blow him off, but i wish i would have sat down with him to hear his stories of his flights against the Luftwaffe. he has been past for quite a few years now, but i wanted to pay tribute to someone that was family.
i did as much research as i could and found a little information on him. first. a photo of him exiting his aircraft. not sure of when this was, but from what i can see, it looks like a P47N.


i also found this great after action report


Unfortunately, this was the only photo i could find. i did find on littlefriends.uk information about his plane. He was with the slybirds group -353rd fighter group, 352nd fighter sq. with the markings SX-K and plane ID 414693.
i really needed to know what he had for nose art. i had found a set of decals for a P47 that had his wifes name, "GINNY" on the nose with "flying finn" further in on the fuselage. i wanted to replicate the original photo with the most recognizable aircraft that he flew. so, even though the photo has a different aircraft, i was able to get a little information out of my grandmother of how the nose are was. the p51 had the name on both sides of the nose. i knew he used "ginny" but also "flying finn" she was vaguely able to remember that the name was different from one side than it was from the other.
with a little more research i found another image that showed his plane from the left side. it was a recreation of the plane for a game called aces high. cant really use it as basis for fact, but its all i had to work with.

still working on the figure, but it will be the same pose as the first photo.




ill be mounting this within a glass box. so, i havent even started the base work yet. that will be coming up in a month or so.

I think this would get more appreciation on Aeroscale, instead of Armorama. That being said, do you intend to add a figure to represent Major Junttila?

I'll agree that any aircraft, car, ship, etc. really doesn't belong on this forum. Being a former military aircraft builder, it's a nice change of place for both the builder and the viewer. Maybe what we need here is a sub forum for non-armor modeling subjects. At least that way, our friends and peers can see and comment on our other modeling efforts,rather then another different group of builders who have no idea of who we are.

I'm assuming that your P51-D is the 1/48 scale Tamiya kit. The NMF looks really nice, although some variation of panel shades would do wonders for the realism aspect. The rest of the paint job is spot on perfect. And the rather difficult yellow/black nose checkerboard decaling came out perfect as well.

Over all, a great effort and finished model, especially when one considers that it's not your comfort zone by any means.