The Lockheed P-38 Lighting of World War II has a unique design; two engines in twin booms with a center fuselage for pilot and armament. The design team was led by famed aircraft innovator Kelly Johnson and Hal Hibbard. The initial design was based upon a February 1937 specification for a high speed, high altitude fighter. Prototype production started in April 1939 and production continued through the war. It was the only American fighter to be in production from the beginning of the war to the end. The P-38 served in all theaters of WW II.

The innovative design always attracted me. With the aircraft serving in all theaters, there is a range of marking options. But for me, adding the invasion stripes is like putting a tux on the aircraft, it just looks right. So in doing my representations, invasion stripes were a must. What follows is description of how my two crafts were painted and lessons I learned in the process.

Build of two P-38’s with invasion stripes was done using slightly different methods. Kits were basically Academy 1/48 scale P-38Js. The first was an overtrees set from Eduard’s P-38J limited edition series. The Eduard styrene for this subject is from Academy molds. Note, buying Eduard overtrees is a nice way to get inexpensive plastic. But literary just the plastic, no decals, no photo etch, no resin, no instructions. However, instructions are downloadable from their web site. So if you have a specific subject you want to model and have aftermarket decals, this is a nice price option. The second was simply a P-38J Academy kit.

Second time’s a charm.

Why two P-38’s? Small confession here, I botched the first. For anyone who has built a P-38, you know that is it a very tail heavy model. To prevent the model from being a tail sitter, a lot of weight has to be installed upfront. In the processing of installing weights into the engine nacelles I used a thin super glue. This caused a stream of glue to flow through one of the engine vents causing a rather major blemish on the exterior, complete with finger prints. As I was planning a natural metal finish, a second kit was procured to provide replacement parts in order to have clean parts. Side note, repair effort on the glue blemishes seemed to work out OK on the second build.

As mentioned, the first build was done as a natural metal finish aircraft. I used Alclad II gloss black for the base and a couple shades of Alclad aluminum for a final color. I did have issues with the aluminum paint crazing over the base coat. Second coats of aluminum hid most of the crazing but did slightly take away from the clean metallic finish. Once painted, areas were masked for the invasion stripes. The difficult task was masking a straight edge near the engine booms. The compound curves in these areas, especially the underside, made laying tape down in a straight line difficult. After struggling with the masking process, Alclad II white primer was used for the white. This paint has good solid coverage for a white paint. The black stripes were painted with Vallejo NATO Black. NATO Black is really a very, very dark gray and in scale just looks better.

Second kit in hand and repair work done on the blemishes, I moved forward rethinking on how to paint the invasion stripes. On the first build painting the invasion stripes on the wings were the issue. In contrast painting stripes on the booms was easy to mask and paint. The new plan was to paint the stripes on the wings first, then the camouflage colors, and finally the stripes on the booms.

With the wings and fuselage assembled the white and black paint was applied. The booms and other major assembly parts were added next. The wing stripes were then easily masked and olive drab and gray camoflauge paint laid down. In retrospect, all major assemblies could have been built up before painting the wing stripes. In this case, no harm, no foul.

Finally the aircraft was masked off and the boom invasion stripes were added. Again using the Alclad II white primer to provide excellent coverage over the camoflauge colors. Yes, I was a little excessive on masking the aircraft. But (like I have never done before) I wanted to make sure I didn’t leave any paint spills on the finished parts.

At our club meeting, it was noted that my invasion stripes were too perfect. Really?!? It is true that in reality the stripes were applied in the field quickly to support the D-Day invasion. I maintain that there were some crew chiefs that took great pride in their work and did a fine job. For my attempt of doing a fine job a simple template was made out of a scrap styrene strip. This was marked off for the various color bands and used to lay out invasion stripes on both wings and booms.

My representation of “California Cutie”, as with the real aircraft, has a natural metal nose. This was the final aircraft painting challenge. After experiencing crazing on the first build, web searches were conducted. I found several references to Aclad II silver paints crazing when applied over the Alclad II Gloss Black. At least I am not alone. Not sure if this is a systemic problem, older formula of paint (Alclad has change their gloss black formula), or just an old bottle I had. But not willing to take a chance, I used Tamiya Gloss Black. Like the internet world, I found the results very satisfactory. No crazing occurred. This will become my “go to” process in the future.

Why a natural metal nose? In my research I found a couple references that might explain it. The P-38 had several configurations and missions during the war. One being photo-reconnaissance. In the European Theater of Operation, most of the photo-reconnaissance flights were conducted by P-38s. Some of these aircraft were fitted with a Plexiglas nose. To simulate the clear nose, some fighter’s polished the nose back to natural metal. The hope was to have an enemy fighter misidentify an armed P-38 as an unarmed reconnaissance version. Providing a tactical advantage for the P-38.

Lesson learned, before assembly think about how the painting is to be done. Try and anticipate difficult areas to paint and/or mask. In this case masking around the compound curves where the wings and boom meet. While the second build required more masking and trips to the paint booth, it was easier to get good results.

One more lesson learned… I will continue to use Tamiya Gloss Black as the undercoat for Alclad II metallic paints.

Happy modeling!

Note: You can find more pictures of Richard’s P-38 builds here.