Model News 1/72 A-36 'Apache'

by Al Superczynski

History

The USAAC, influenced by the Luftwaffe's success with the Ju 87 Stuka, ordered the A-36 Apache as a derivative of the RAF's Mustang I. Because of its high speed (over 500 mph) in a vertical dive it was equipped with dive brakes above and below the wings. It could carry a 500 lb bomb under each wing and was armed with six .50 caliber machine guns, four in the wings and two in the lower nose.

A total of 500 A-36s were produced, and they first saw action with the 27th and 86th Fighter Bomber Groups in North Africa. Other Apaches (later renamed 'Mustang') entered combat over Burma with the 311th FBG.

My model represents an aircraft of the 524th FBS, 27th FBG out of Gela, Sicily in late 1943 and was built from the Model News kit in 1/72 scale and was originally planned to be part of a three-part kit comparison article in the January 1999 issue! I'll get into my tale of woe shortly; for a look back at the original articles with more detailed historical info and a couple of beautiful Allison Mustang models by Chris Bucholtz and August Horvath – click here – and scroll down to the contents.

The Kit

After checking out the Accurate Miniatures 1/48 scale A-36, I found myself wishing they had done it in the One True Scale as well. I was suitably excited when the Model News kit was first announced since Mustangs of all variations are a passion of mine and I didn't like having to either accurize the old Frog kit or convert a Monogram P-51B. At first glance the kit looked a little crude but workable since it seemed to have an accurate outline, so when the editor suggested a comparison build of this kit and the Condor and Italeri versions I readily agreed. I got the short end of the stick!

Almost the first thing I found out was that the wing roots didn't come near to matching up with the fuselage so I decided it would be easier to just cut the flaps away and model them in the down position using a set of resin flaps I had lounging around in my Mustang parts box. Out came the razor saw and files and off came the kit flaps. Easy enough, right? Hang on.

Since I wanted to do this as much OOB as possible (things didn't work out that way) I opted to use the kit cockpit interior parts. These needed a lot of thinning, scraping, and general cleaning-up to be anywhere near usable. That should have been my first clue. Anyway, I went ahead and installed the floor, seat bulkhead, radio shelf, and side panels, spraying the whole mess with Floquil Military Colors (lacquer) Interior Green. I sprayed the seat with Medium Green and the instrument panel flat black, and then used washes and drybrushing to bring out what little detail and relief there was. I added a spare Hasegawa P-51B control stick, photo-etched seat belts/straps, and a simple scratchbuilt gunsight after I eventually glued the fuselage halves together.

The trailing edge of the kit rudder was grossly thick so I discarded it and used one cut from an old Heller kit fuselage, modifying the rudder hinge to the correct location while I was at it. I replaced the control rod and housing with scrap plastic and stretched sprue, and added the tail light with a drop of Kristal Klear after final assembly. Moving to the other end of the fuselage I opened up the carburetor intake scoop using needle files and a sharp #11 blade. I cleaned up the exhausts and checked them for fit, finding that I needed to enlarge the cowl slots slightly to get them to fit. By the way, after scraping, sanding, and filing the kit exhaust parts into something resembling the real thing I brushed on a couple coats of Testors liquid cement to smooth out the tooling marks ­ be careful not to remove the mold parting line since it was characteristic of the real thing. I then turned my attention to how I would later mount the prop. I like to make mine movable if possible to reduce the risk of damage by non-modeling admirers attempting to spin it, so I used scrap parts to make a bushing assembly that I could add as the last building step and drilled/filed an opening in the nose to accept it.

After making sure I had all the cockpit parts in place I added a tail wheel well from plastic card and joined the fuselage halves. I decided that since the cockpit detail wasn't really all that great Iíd display the model with the canopy closed. Next big problem - besides being nearly as thick as a Coke bottle - the kit canopy didn't fit, was very cloudy, and wouldn't even fit down over the seat bulkhead. I test fitted a Hasegawa P-51B canopy and found it to be a close match, so used it with a little shimming and trimming. I attached it with non-fogging super glue, temporarily blocked off the prop opening in the nose, added the radiator scoop inlet, and attacked the fuselage seams and the canopy with sanding sticks to blend it all together. Whew.

On to the wings. Of course because I had opted to drop the flaps I needed to have the main wheel doors hanging open, exposing the gaping hole the kit provides for a gear well. All this was scratchbuilt from strip styrene and scraps. I also opened up the location in the port wing leading edge for a landing light, a significant detail completely ignored by Model News. I used clear rod for the lights themselves, and a chunk of clear sprue for the lens cover. I drilled holes for later mounting of a set of PM wingtip lights, properly staggered wing guns, and a brass tube, wire, plastic scrap pitot tube. After gluing the wing parts together, shaping the landing light cover, and cleaning up the seams I inserted plastic tubing into the wing gun holes to make an easy job of adding the steel tube gun barrels later and substituted Hasegawa stores pylons for the kit parts. The engraving for the dive brakes was very poor and my first thought was to just replace them with photo-etched parts from an old IPMS/USA set but I couldn't get them to lie flat and/or kept snagging them and pulling them off. I wound up removing them completely and tediously re-scribing the brakes by hand.

Next I used a dental grinder bit in my Dremel Mini-Mite to modify the fuselage wing roots in the area of the flaps so that I could install them in the down position. I was finally ready to mate the wings and fuselage but the fit still wasn't so great and I had to fill gaps with scrap bits of plastic card and Bondo spot putty. Finishing off the main airframe, I at first considered using the kit's horizontal stabs but didn't like their soapy detail and the lack of any fabric effect on the elevators. I decided to go back to the parts box and use a pair from the Hasegawa kit instead - they fit just fine with a couple of plastic scraps used to make up for minor differences in the ends of the stabs and the roots molded on the tail. I pinned them for extra strength.

Turning to the resin flaps, I found them to be seriously warped and tried straightening them out with hot water and a blow dryer. This worked okay but the trailing edges were so thin that they curled from the heat. I found a couple of flaps from some long-forgotten kit in my parts boxes and used them as a base for scratchbuilding new flaps. It would have been just as easy to shape them from thick plastic card! At least this monster was starting to take shape and all the serious problems were behind me and I was almost ready for paint.

I rescribed all the panel lines lost in the cleaning-up process and sprayed on a coat of Floquil Neutral Gray overall as a primer. After checking for and fixing flaws I resprayed the affected areas and airbrushed Floquil Field Drab on the top surfaces – the demarcation between upper and lower colors was done freehand using a Paasche Model H with #1 tip. To get a nice gloss finish for decal application I sprayed the whole model with a water-based urethane thinned with windshield washer fluid. After allowing 30 minutes for it to cure I applied decals from the Condor kit (courtesy of Chris Bucholtz), with the yellow stripes on the wings from an old Scalemaster sheet. For the final flat finish I used Badger Modelflex acrylic which sprays nicely thinned with windshield washer fluid and dries dead flat in about five minutes.

I then began finishing up by adding the prop and spinner, landing gear, antenna mast, and pitot tube, carefully drilled-out kit nose guns. The prop had previously been painted by doing the tips first in gloss yellow, masking them off with liquid mask, spraying them with gloss black, adding the stenciling from an old IPMS sheet, and brushing on a coat of Badger clear flat. The spinner was brush painted with Tamiya flat red acrylic. I used resin main gear doors, with the remainder of the landing gear parts being from Hasegawa, shortening the struts as necessary and filing small flat spots on the contact points of the tires.

I added the flaps after first foiling their leading edges, and simulated exhaust stains with gray pastels scrubbed on with an old stub brush I use for dry brushing. Then I realized that I had forgotten to apply the decals to the gas caps on the wings! Not wanting any decal film to show, I punched out correct sized disks from some scrap red decal using a Waldron punch set and added them using a tiny drop of Solvaset. Thankfully they turned out perfect and I could finally put a 1/72 scale A-36 in my display case!

This has to be one of the poorest quality kits I've ever built (well almost - ask me about my 1/48 MiG-19 sometime) so I attacked it in fits and starts, sometimes letting it languish for weeks at a time before summoning up enough courage to take up the challenge yet again. The poorly-fitting parts and generally mushy detail would normally have been enough to cause me to launch it into flight against a wall but I stuck it out because of my promise to the publisher, to whom I apologize for the lengthy delay in finishing the kit and this article. I'd recommend that anyone else wanting to build an A-36 in this scale use the Condor kit or lay in lots of aspirin and coffee. Of course we can always hope that Accurate Miniatures will one day scale down their 1/48 scale jewel!