1/48 Tamiya Brewster B 339 Buffalo of No. 488 Sqn RNZAF, Kallang, Singapore, Dec 1941

Depicted as an aircraft operated by No. 488 Sqn RNZAF,  Kallang, Singapore, Dec 1941.

This is the Pacific Theatre Boxing of the excellent little Tamiya Buffalo Kit. The kit has a mixture of raised and recessed panel lines. I decided early on I was going to build this one straight out of the box and not get carried away. I've pretty much stuck to that.

If you've looked at some of other kits you'd know that I have a thing for RNZAF or  aircraft flown by Kiwis in the RAF. This kit comes with the decals for a aircraft in a Kiwi Sqn and it has the interesting dragon nose art, so I was always going to build this aircraft.

The Build

The kit goes together pretty well. The cockpit is quite nicely detailed  as most Tamiya kits are. The decals for the instrument panel fit well.

I had the problem with the step on the rear decking behind the cockpit, a bit of Sqn green fixed that. I did experience a small step along the rest of the fuselage join however as I was wary of this when assembling I made sure the step was on the underside of the model. Again a little bit of Squadron  green fixed that. The pics below show me going overboard with the filler. Once sanded down there virtually none of this left. 

Another area that required a bit of work was the underside on the wing section and where it joins to the fuselage. This needed bit of filler to as there was a step between the 2.  I used the cockpit decals and they look reasonably effective.

The only modifications I made were re scribing all the raised lines (well all bar 2 or 3 I missed) ,  I also scratch built a rear vision mirror because the 488 Sqn aircraft had a locally fitted rear vision mirror taken from a car. and I drilled some round sprue to make gun barrels for the wing guns.

Painting and Finishing

Tamyia included a set of canopy masks that were fun to apply but certainly did make masking the canopy and underside window easier. Nice touch Tamiya.

The kit was painted with Tamyia and Gunze Acrylics. I like Tamiya's Flat Earth (XF 52) for RAF Dark Earth. I used Tamiya Sky (XF21) for the sky 1/2 of the underside. I'm still to sure this is the right colour for RAF sky as it looks to green. But I've used it before, mainly because it seems to closely match the Sky fuselage band decals that many kit and decal manufacturers use. I also painted the fuselage band instead using the decal. I find you get a better result that way. Tamyia Flat black was used for the underside black. This sprays really well. For the RAF dark green I prefer Gunze H309. It just looks right to me.

The kit was then sealed with Pledge One Go and decals applied. They went down beautifully with no silvering. This has been the easiest decaling job I've done to date. I noticed in Mike's review he mentioned the dragon was only of the left side. I mentioned this on a NZ Aviation Forum I frequent and was told there is some evidence that it was on both side. It's a nice looking piece of art so I decided to put them on both sides.

Once decals had set, another coat of One go was put down and then an oil wash was applied. For the upper surfaces I used a mixture of raw Umber and some other browns. For the underside I used a grey wash, particularly to give a little bit of contrast on the black wing.
A coat of Gunze Flat clear was applied then a some pastel chalks for exhaust and gun stains along with the silver pencil for some scratches.

Conclusions

Good things about this kit are the decal options, the mask and it's ease of assembly. The figures are a nice bonus, unfortunately I didn't really do him justice. 

My only disappointment is the one piece canopy. It really could do with a 2 piece canopy so you could see in the cockpit.

The Pictures

1/48 Hasegawa Curtis P-40N Kittyhawk - "Gloria Lyons", NZ3220, of No 4 Servicing Unit and flown by 18 Squadron RNZAF, June/July 1944

 

Depicted as  Curtis P-40N Kittyhawk "Gloria Lyons", NZ3220,  of No 4 Servicing Unit and flown by 18 Squadron RNZAF, June/July 1944.

Hasegawa's P-40's are a pretty simple to build and build into a excellent kit straight out of the box. The only fitting issues I encountered were the tail sections and the bit behind the cockpit, and these weren't to difficult to solve. This is so they can use the same basic front fuselage for all models of the P-40E onwards.

The only things I didn't like out of the box was the seat and the wheels, The wheels are wrong for the P-40N.  I couldn't find a true details seat alone so I ended up with the True Details cockpit for the P-40N. In my limited experience this is the best value resin cockpit I've seen, I wish I'd taken some photos before I'd assembled it. The Hasegawa cockpit isn't bad all all but for $14 AUD I'd highly recommend the True Details one. The cockpit set doesn't come with a instrument panel so you have to use the kit one, which is very nice. I went with the decals for the panel because I really can't paint instrument panels (I envy those of you who can).

To correct the wheels I used the new Ultracast P-40N wheels. As with all Ultracast resin they are superb.

Being a kiwi and ex RNZAF I have a thing for RNZAF aircraft. I managed to get hold of the "Gloria Lyons" decals from Aeromaster Sheet 48-10 (RNZAF in the Pacific), so this was the aircraft I decided to model.

 The Build

The photos below show the True Details cockpit complete and dry fitted to the fuselage. Getting the cockpit to fit wasn't to difficult but it does take patience (one thing I'm short of) and a fair bit of dry fitting. You also need some good references so you can work out were it should sit. I really made a meal of this and had to use plastic card to fix some stuff ups.  Remember, check twice cut once :-).

If I build another Hasegawa P-40 I will ignore the instructions and assemble the  tail sections to the fuselage and then join the completed halves together, rather than assemble the tail section and forward fuselage as per the instructions. A bit of putty was needed to smooth out the forward fuselage/tail section joins and the rear cockpit section to fuselage join. I also has some re-scribing to do.  

 It was about now I discovered a major flaw in my plan. Despite having looked at http://rnzaf.hobbyvista.com I hadn't noticed Gloria Lyons on the Aeromaster Sheet was a P-40N-1 with the P-40M/K rear cockpit. Thankfully there were 4 aircraft named Gloria Lyons (3 P-40's and Corsair) and Gloria Lyons the 3rd was a P-40N-20 which fitted the kits. I just had to use some individual tail number decals, which I had.

Painting and Finishing

The kit was painted with Humbrol 155 Olive Drab mixed with about 10% white and Humbrol 128 for the underside. I also post shaded a few panels with a lighter mix of Olive drab. I tried pre-shading but with the dark colours it just didn't work.

The usual coat of Kleer was applied then the decals. Unfortunately there was quite a bit of silvering, probably because I didn't get a decent enough coat of Kleer on the kit, but with Hasegawa's really fine lines I find it easy to overdo it and fill up the line with Kleer.  Also the the locations for the lower surface roundels on the  Aeromaster decal sheet didn't match up (in my eyes) with the location in the picture I had of the aircraft, so I went with what I thought was right.

 

Another coat of Kleer then an enamel wash of a mixture of whatever browns I had lying around. After this was cleaned of it was sealed with a coat of Gunze Cleat flat and some weathering with pastel chalks and a Silver artists pencil. many of the RNZAF P-40's were pretty heavily weather, operating piston aircraft of coral runways meant plenty of little chips. These were sealed with another coat of Gunze flat

In conclusion despite the silvering and a few other things I stuffed up, I'm fairly happy with the result, although I must admit I'm not entirely satisfied. If I don't get side tracked, I'm considering getting some aftermarket PSP and doing a little Pacific diorama.

Also I'd like to put out a public thanks to Pete and his web site, http://rnzaf.hobbyvista.com/index.html . It is the best site for RNZAF pacific war subjects and I used it extensively, along with RNZAF The first decade: by Charles Darby.

The Photos

 

These were taken before I sold the model in 2025.