Hawker P-53E Tempest

[pyro-manic]

This is a small tribute to the nose art king, Jorel62. He has done a large number of excellent profiles, and there are many of them that I would like to build at some point. Here is his gorgeous P-53E Tempest:



And here is my build based on it:






It's not exactly the same, but I think I captured the general "feel" of it. I used the old Revell Tempest V kit - a bit of a dog, with a canopy that I broke trying to get to fit (JayBee kindly sent me a replacement, as well as the rest of an Academy Tempest!  ), not very much detail (nearly all that was there was raised and got sanded off during construction), and poor fit. Add to this the fact that my cat decided that my bench was a nice place to sit during construction, and the landing gear fell prey to his six-odd kilos. I repaired them, but they ended up at the wrong angle, with the result that the nose is rather higher than it should be.  Paints are Citadel, and the markings are from the kit (stencils etc), a Revell P-47D, and the nose art is from the Italeri Counter Invader.

I haven't done much in the way of a back story, but I was thinking something along the lines of sabotage or design problems meaning that P-47s do not get built in any numbers, leaving the USAAF in need of a heavy fighter.

[Brian da Basher]

That's a very nice tribute to one heck of a profiler, pyro! You did some excellent work on the red tail (appears flawless!) and the nose art is certainly reminiscent of Jorel's inspiring work!

Brian da Basher

[Ian the Kiwi Herder]

Really like that.... superb 

Ian

[PR19_Kit]

GASP! Your nose art girlie has NO clothes on at all!!!  

That's pretty good work from that old Revell kit, I did Pierre Closterman's Tempest from that kit decades ago, using ABT decals even, and it needs LOTS of work to make it all fit, nice one indeed.

[Sauragnmon]

Very nicely done, love the work overall - one suggestion might be another layer or two of paint on the canopy - it's thin enough that at the right angles, light's shining through it.  Your call though, but overall she's a beautiful piece of work.

[ChernayaAkula]

Very nice indeed! Tempests sure look good in US colours! 

[Mossie]

Pretty!

[pyro-manic]

Thankyou for the kind words, guys - blame jorel for this one. I just had to build it!

Brian - thanks, it took many, many coats of paint to get the red looking decent. It's Citadel Red Gore lightened with a bit of white and yellow. I think it looks nice.

Saur - I think you're right. I hadn't noticed it until now, but I will go over it again.

Kit - Not a stitch! I looked for something closer to the profile image, but that was the only "pinup" type decal I could find in my stash. At least it wasn't that one from the Thud.... It wasn't an easy build - I'll go for the Academy kit in future.

[Weaver]

Dunno if it's just me, but three of your four pics are coming up with red crosses: are Photobucket being prudes again maybe? They've deleted one or two images I had on the grounds of them being "pronographic", which is ridiculous: one of them was a Skydiver crew woman from UFO!

Nice Tempest anyway. Looks good and somehow "fitting" in those colours: just the sort of big beast of a plane that the USAAF would go for! 

[jorel62]

"The Nose Art King" I'm flattered........ She sure looks great

[ysi_maniac]

You made a beauty from a very BAD kit

[kitnut617]

You made a beauty from a very BAD kit

I agree Carlos,  but it is the only Tempest Mk.V Series I on the market.

[NARSES2]

Good job with that old kit 

[Sisko]

Very very nice!

Great subject and nice alternate scheme!