The Doug Champlin collection in Ariz had one of the few airworthy examples. One of the most unusual features of this aircraft was dive brakes which extended upwards from the top of the wings on both sides. These were not solid but resembled a “fence section”. They were used in Italy before the addition of the Merlin. There is a you tube video of a squadron of these on a bombing mission where the dive brakes are visible in Italy in 1943. Just thought some would like to know.

@HammerheadModelMaking

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Very cool info! I have an Eduard Photo Etch set for this kit and will building it with the dive brakes extended to show them off!

I built this kit in the late 90's, and it was a great kit to put together and looks fantastic.

@HammerheadModelMaking

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In spite of its age, like you said, it really is a good kit.

I'm not surprised that the details on it is unusually high for a lot of that age. I have the AM Dauntless and Avenger, and both of them are pretty damn nice for the age and how cheap I got them. I had to replace the decals on them, but I usually do that anyway with kits. I've bought a couple other kits that I know were re-boxed AM kits, but I can't remember them offhand right now.

@HammerheadModelMaking

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Yeah, you can still find pretty much most of the AM kits reboxed these days, mostly through Academy and Italeri. I must have build more than a dozen of the AM kits back in the day, including their B-25 (I have a reboxed version of that in my stash!) But I still enjoy them today!

Did the Academy boxed P51A version of this a few months back. Still very nice.

@HammerheadModelMaking

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Nice! I assume it had better decals? Was it still molded in green plastic?

@paulfrantizek102

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@@HammerheadModelMaking The decals were very nice, RAF camo, RAF green, and USAAF OD. Molded in the typical Academy grey.

Thanks for the review. Seems like in 30 years there is some kind of chemical change of the plastic and decals. Still looks like a nice kit to build. Waiting for that build review 🫡👍

@HammerheadModelMaking

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Thanks for watching! Yeah, I'm sure you're correct about the chemicals. Still enjoying the build so far!

These early P51/A36 caused quite a stir when they first came out. Fairly well researched and the instructions were funny because you had to actually read the text - the diagrams were quite basic and left a bit to be desired. Have at least two or three of all the AM kits in the stash.

@HammerheadModelMaking

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in spite of the flaws of the kit, the instructions like you mentioned aren't great, I really enjoyed building these kits back in the day, and this one as well more recently.

I still think the Mustang's Allison variants are much better looking than the Packard-Merlin ones. It really looks sleek and beautiful. The P-51D looks bloated in comparison (although if I were a fighter pilot back in the WW2 days I would rather fly the P-51D). This kit is beautiful, and it arrived almost at the same same time as the Tamiya's Mustangs in 1/48 in the mid 90's. It was a good time to be a Mustang fan.

@HammerheadModelMaking

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There is a certain charm with the Allison Mustangs. Between the Accurate Miniatures line and the Tamiya D model, one could easily build the full line of war used mustangs in the early 90s. You're right, it was a good time to be a mustang fan!

Just a comment for the algorithm

"promosm" 👀

It's actually just called a Mustang dive bomber, although they were unofficially called the Invader. Apache however, was an erroneous name given to them long after world war 2 that for some reason ended up sticking but is not historically accurate at all.

@HammerheadModelMaking

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Awesome, good to know! Thanks for educating me!

@kennethcrowther2277

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@@HammerheadModelMaking my pleasure, but gee the name Apache sure has stuck! You do basically see it referred to as Apache almost everywhere.

@kennethcrowther2277

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@@HammerheadModelMaking I can't remember the details now as it was a while ago, but there is a story behind why it ended up being called the Apache, as you'd expect. If I remember right it was sometime around the late 60s, early 70s.

@HammerheadModelMaking

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@@kennethcrowther2277 Interesting how that works out!