Kit: No. 72068
Scale: 1/72
Manufacturer: MPM, distributed by Eduard, 800 Proctor Ave., Ogdensburg, NY 13669
Price: $13.99
Comments: Injection molded, 61 parts (17 photoetched, 3 vacuum formed), decals.
Curtiss’ famous P-40 series saw many changes to the classic airframe and power plant. Among those were the Merlin-engined P-40F and P-40L. Many of them were produced with the lengthened tail, a countermeasure for directional instability that plagued earlier variants.
Until now, no kit of the Merlin P-40 was available in 1/72 scale. MPM’s kit is molded in light gray styrene. Surface detail is finely recessed panel lines, but the parts have flash and numerous raised blemishes. Small parts such as aerials and landing-gear struts are too thick for the scale. The photoetched-brass sheet includes seat harnesses, rudder pedals, the main instrument panel, radiator front, and landing-gear retraction struts and scissors. The combination of the brass panel and the film instruments offers the best-looking gauges in this scale.
Decals are included for an “Operation Torch” P-40F and a P-40L from late 1943. The colors are printed accurately and in register. MPM’s instructions provide a short history, building tips, parts map, and 11 easy-to-follow assembly steps.
Building my sample was a struggle. I elected to shave off the poor, raised rudder pedals from the plastic cockpit floor and install the better photoetched ones to the back of the instrument panel. That looked great, but the pedals collided with the floor. I reinserted them higher on the back of the panel, but they still wouldn’t fit. I finally yanked them out – I couldn’t have seen them anyway.
On the other hand, the photoetched seat belts work great. You may want to find a better control stick from your spares box. There are no cockpit sidewall details or side consoles.
The fuselage halves line up OK, but a perfect alignment places the mounting stub of the left horizontal stabilizer about 1mm aft of the right stub. The fit of the wing to the fuselage was poor and required a lot of dry-fitting and sanding. The trailing edges of the wings are acceptably thin, but you’ll need to clean up the mating surfaces of all major parts.
My sample’s fin/rudder piece was thinner than the rear fuselage, so more sanding was required.
The main gear struts are thick and needed a lot of cleanup. The combination of the oversize struts and the too-thin scissors and retractors looked awful, so I substituted Hasegawa gear struts. Drill mounting holes in the gear wells for whichever struts you use; while you’re at it, enlarge and deepen the holes in the main wheels to accept the axles.
Before I painted the model I filled seams with gap-filling super glue and sanded all the joints. While MPM correctly leaves off the carburetor air scoop on the top of the nose and depicts the proper lower cowl-flap arrangement, the shape of the radiator “chin” is too rounded. The Merlin P-40s had a “square-chinned” appearance compared with the Allison-engined variants. This isn’t hard to fix; I used coarse, medium, and fine sanding sticks to remove plastic from the bottom of the radiator housing from about 5mm back from the leading edge to the cowl flaps.
Trimming the vacuum-formed one-piece canopy is tricky as the cut lines are not clearly defined. I blew mine, so I grabbed the canopy and side windows from a Hasegawa P-40E kit. After I cleaned up the fuselage mating surfaces, the canopy fit as well as it does on the Hasegawa kit.
Painting the desert scheme was fun. I airbrushed the model overall middlestone, then cut low-tack-tape templates and sprayed the hard-lined dark earth areas. The underside was azure blue. All paints came from the new Testor Model Master II line.
The Propagteam decals are thin so moving them around can cause them to fold over and tear. They responded well to Microset. If you choose the P-40L marking option, cut off the inboard machine guns. This is shown in the markings drawing, but not mentioned in the instructions.
With the modifications I made, the finished model looks like a P-40F, and that’s what counts. I used several books on the P-40 as references, among them Squadron/Signal’s P-40 in Action.
Because of the fit problems and cleanup necessary, this project took longer than usual to finish – 30 hours. Beginners may choose to overlook the kit’s inadequacies and skip the optional photoetched parts. Enthusiasts will find fixing MPM’s P-40F easier than converting an Allison-engined kit.
Paul Boyer