P-47D Bubbletop Fighter Aircraft WWII

Another winner from Tamiya. Everything went together like a dream. This is a fun kit to put together

Tamiya is well known for producing super-high quality kits with very clever engineering designed to help the model come together more cleanly and minimize the amount of work you need to do cleaning up the assembly. This kit did not disappoint, everything from the cockpit to the landing gear to the gun barrel shrouds were precision-engineered to the absolute limit, making the model come together like Legos. The model itself is also extremely well detailed and takes very well to aftermarket upgrades, of which there are plenty available from Eduard and other modelling supply companies. I used the standard upgrade kit, the gun bays, and resin wheel sets for my build. The parts are very cleanly molded with little-to-no flash, and the canopy was molded in a way as to avoid any nasty seam lines, removing the need for any polishing work which is often needed for teardrop canopies in other kits. Masking sheets for the clear parts are NOT provided, you will need to purchase these aftermarket or make your own. Plenty of accessories are available for you to customize the loadout for your model, including extra fuel tanks, rockets, and bombs, and typical loadouts that the plane used on its missions are also given in the instructions. I went with the ground-attack loadout, outfitting my plane with rocket tubes, 500lb bombs, and the 108gal flat drop tank (The second option is for long-range escort and loads the plane up with as much fuel as it can carry). The instructions are very well diagrammed and organized, so it is very clear where each part is to be used and what colors to paint the parts where needed. The colors are given in the Tamiya color range, which is standard with their kits. I largely stuck with the assigned colors in the instructions, but deviated heavily for the exterior paintwork. My goal with this build was achieving the most realistic metal finish possible on the body, which required specialty paints from Alclad to achieve. You can still get a great result with the recommended color in the instructions for the outside, though. The downside to a model engineered so precisely is that it comes with a lot of small parts. This kit may come together easily, but there are more beginner-friendly options out there if that is what you are looking for. There are many small parts to work with, mainly in the cockpit and landing gear, and the decal sheet is, in my view, over-engineered. It was to the point where I completely wrote off even attempting to use the invasion-stripe decals (easily a third of the decals on the sheet are just for those!) and painted them onto the model. Overall, this kit was a great experience to build and the results show. It is one of the best renditions of the P-47D on the market today, hands down. With sufficient references you can get very, very close to replicating a real aircraft with this kit, and I highly recommend this to any intermediate-to-advanced builders out there.

This kit is very well organized with plenty of configuration options for the builder to choose from. The checkerboard on the nose cowling is a nice option. This is a quality thunderbolt kit and one of the best Thunderbolt kits out there.