P-39: Transitional-era Fighters Go Head-to-Head

P-39: Transitional-Era Fighters Go Head-to-Head

The Accurate Miniatures P-39 vs. the Hasegawa P-400 Airacobra
Ned Barnett (Review copies provided by author)


The Aircraft

Transitional Era: The P-39 is an ideal example of what I like to call a “transitional-era” fighter. The Airacobra is from the late-1930s-generation of early all-metal, enclosed-cockpit, retractable-gear fighters with a militarily-significant armament (rather than the legacy WW-I-era armament of two rifle-caliber machine guns). This was a generation of fighters that included the American Air Corps P-35, the P-36 Hawk and early P-40 Tomahawks, as well as the Soviet I-16, the Fleet Air Arm’s Fairey Fulmar, the Japanese A5M “Claude” and the US Navy’s F2A Buffalo and F4F Wildcat.

These transitional-era planes were all forced into combat in World War II, fighting against later generation fighters – and though some were clearly outclassed, some (and this includes the P-39, the P-40 and the Wildcat) soldiered on right to the end of the war. What is even more remarkable, many of these transitional-era aircraft actually proved quite effective, though generally in very limited combat situations. Though it accomplished little for the U.S. Army Air Corps, the P-36 Hawk and the F2A Buffalo – a total failure for the Marines at Midway – achieved remarkable success in the hands of the Finnish Air Force. In the skies over Midway – and later over Guadalcanal – the seemingly-inferior F4F Wildcat scored a 7-to-1 kill ratio over the arguably superior A6M Zero Fighter. The same thing happened with the P-39 Airacobra – in the hands of Soviet fighter pilots, including some of their highest-scoring aces – was wildly successful against even late-model Luftwaffe fighters and skilled “experten.”

As an aside – for a more detailed review, go to http://barnettonaviation.blogspot.com/2007/01/hey-little-kobra-dont-ya-know-youre.html – the remarkable book “Attack of the Airacobras: Soviet Aces, American P-39s and the Air War Against Germany,” which was written by a Russian author (and WW-II Soviet tank commander who commanded a Lend-Lease Sherman) – details the Soviet view that below 17,000 feet, the Airacobra was faster, more maneuverable and superior in the vertical plane than the Bf-109 F and G, and A-model Fw-190s. While this seems a remarkable assertion to westerners who tend to think of the Airacobra as a second-line “dog,” and who believed the oft-told tale that the Soviets liked the P-39 for its tank-killing 37mm Oldsmobile auto-cannon, this book contends that in Soviet hands the P-39 was used primarily in air-to-air combat during the last two years of the war – from March, 1943 to May, 1945. Further, it was the mount of some of the Soviet Union’s top-scoring aces, including one remarkable pilot who shot down 50 confirmed Luftwaffe aircraft while flying P-39s … and lived to tell the tale.

This remarkable series of exploits is further recounted in Osprey’s new Soviet Lend-Lease Fighter Aces of World War II (Osprey Aircraft of the Aces Vol. 74) (link). The latter book emphasized that these P-39s were used for air-to-air combat – they had no armor-piercing ammunition for their 37mm cannon and were not assigned to ground assault missions – though they frequently flew escort for ground-attack IL-2 Sturmoviks, which did have AP ammo for their wing-mounted anti-tank cannons.

Just as some Finns turned the Buffalo and the Fokker D.XXI into decisively-effective combat aircraft, and just as seemingly grass-green USMC fighter pilots in F4F Wildcats defeated some of the best-trained Zero pilots in the Imperial Japanese Navy, these Soviet pilots developed tactics that were ideally-suited to giving the P-39 the upper hand in air-to-air combat. In doing so, they quickly learned how to turn their Airacobras into deadly “exterminators.”

Adapting the American technology to their own use, they wired the separate triggers for the machine guns and the cannon together, making it easier to fire concentrated plane-killing bursts of bullets and cannon shells. They spent endless hours perfecting combat radio discipline, enabling them to coordinate the attacks to bring superior numbers of Airacobras to bear on a single aerial target, even when outnumbered two or three to one. They learned how to use the Airacobra’s often-criticized weight to good effect in diving attacks. They learned how to close to point-blank range where they could use the concentrated firepower of two nose-mounted .50 caliber machine guns and the hard-hitting 37mm auto-cannon to literally rip sturdy, well-built and well-armored Luftwaffe fighters and bombers into shreds.

In short, these Soviet fighter pilots – who, after two years of getting their heads handed to them on a silver platter by more experienced and better-equipped German “experten,” ultimately led the VVS to victory – found a way of making the Airacobra live up to it’s potential. They were the survivors of an incredible and brutally Darwinian process of survival of the fittest; and these pilots used everything they’d learned to turn that “dog” – the unloved and unwanted P-39 Airacobra – into a war-winning weapon. They did this at a time – 1943 to 1945 – when the other Allies were retiring these aircraft as quickly as they could be replaced by “better” combat aircraft. I’ve presented more information on this aspect of the P-39 in my review (link) of “Attack of the Airacobras: Soviet Aces, American P-39s and the Air War Against Germany.”

At a time when the US Army Air Corps saw its mission as coastal defense, the P-39 was initially designed as a turbo-supercharged high-altitude, high-performance interceptor. The original XP-39 became the first US fighter – perhaps the world’s first fighter aircraft – to be able to fly faster than 400 mph. However, inexplicably, the Air Corps mandated that the P-39 be stripped of it’s turbo-supercharger and loaded with a ton or so of armor, self-sealing fuel tanks, added armament – and turned a sleek, high-altitude greyhound into low-altitude beast-of-burden. What they Army couldn’t take away was the aircraft’s low-altitude maneuverability and exceptionally heavy cannon and machine-gun armament, and these two attributes proved the plane’s worth in the skies over Russia and New Guinea. In his autobiography, an ace of no less ability than Japan’s Saburo Sakai commented favorably on the low-level speed and maneuverability of the P-39s he encountered over New Guinea. In the skies over the southern Soviet Union, some of Russia’s highest-scoring aces in the Air Force’s most elite Guards fighter regiments ran up their scores flying P-39s – and a few came as close to open revolt and mutiny as was tolerated in the strict Soviet system when they were ordered to change from their agile, hard-hitting P-39s to more politically-acceptable Soviet-build fighters.

Those transitional-era fighters which “survived” to serve more than briefly in World War II all morphed into more advanced machines: the F4F became the FM-2 “Wilder Wildcat,” the P-36 Hawk became the P-40 Tomahawk – which in turn evolved into a more advanced and harder-hitting (though perhaps aesthetically less-pleasing) Kittyhawk and Warhawk. Likewise, the P-39 evolved – through the XP-39F – into the superior P-63 Kingcobra, a far better aircraft based around the same 37mm cannon and center-mounted engine. Like the P-39, the Kingcobra was build in large numbers for the Soviets, but unlike the P-39, the Kingcobra was not used in combat by the U.S. Army Air Forces. With it’s many refinements, the Kingcobra – like the Seversky P-35, which evolved into the Republic P-43 Lancer and ultimately into the war-winning P-47 Thunderbolt – had evolved away from the “transitional era.”

However, the P-39 served in almost all combat theaters – the Southwest Pacific, Guadalcanal, the Aleutians, across the vast Soviet “Eastern Front,” and in North Africa, and fought in the hands of the Americans, the Soviets, the Free French and the allied Italians after the fall of Fascist Italy. In every theater, the P-39 performed more effectively than its post-war reputation would suggest – and although it was virtually out of US service by the time the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs ended the war – the Soviets, the French and the Italians all used the aircraft well into the late 1940s. And when stripped of combat gear, the P-39 proved to be an exceptional low-level pylon racer – which is why the kitting of the Cobra I and Cobra II is a welcome edition to the collection of P-39 kits.

The Kits

Sometime in the dim, dark past of modeling – about 1965 if memory serves – Revell had a roughly 1/4th-scale kit of the Tex Hill Thompson Trophy racer, the “Cobra II.” At a time when most decent kits were built in either odd scales or the emerging British 1/72nd scale, this was a remarkable kit. I haven’t seen one in decades, but – like a few other kits I built in the ‘60s (I remember a large-scale Grumman amphibian flying boat that I’ve never seen again, but would love to build) – but I’ve never stopped looking. No doubt it is crude by today’s standards, but that didn’t change the memories – but now I can stop looking. Accurate Miniatures has issued a truly superior “one-size-fits-all” P-39 kit that includes optional parts (primarily a belly cooling scoop to support the souped-up engine) for the Cobra I and Cobra II Thompson Trophy racers.

“When it rains, it pours.” Accurate produced this kit at roughly the same time that Hasegawa issued the first of what is no doubt going to be a series of P-39 kits, beginning with the P-400. Until recently, in 1/48th scale, we had only the Monogram P-39 kit – a remarkably decent kit considering its age (and one that, with the addition of some after-market enhancements) still makes up into a remarkably accurate-looking P-39. But that kit can now go to the collectors’ auctions, because two fully-modern state-of-the-art kits are available.

The Accurate Miniatures Kit

The Accurate Miniatures kit is packaged as a P-39Q, but a quick look at the parts break-down and the incredibly-detailed instructions make it clear that Accurate intends this kit to be a one-size-fits-all model kit, one that can be made up into any of the production versions of the P-39 series. This is actually less difficult than it might seem – the visible external differences in the operational P-39s were largely confined to the wing guns, the cannon and to the exhaust stacks. A detailed parts review of the Accurate kit suggests that it has all the parts for all the versions – there are a number of clearly-unused parts not needed for the P-39Q or the Thompson Trophy racers – all except perhaps for the 20mm cannon found in the P-400. There is one un-named part which “may” be intended as the 20mm cannon barrel, but it doesn’t have the bands I’ve seen in some photos of the Hispano cannon mounted in the built-for-the-British P-400. Other photos of P-400s in US service indicate a smooth barrel – my suggestion: check clear photos of the specific aircraft you’re looking to model and either use the unmarked-barrel from the kit or modify it (bands of Tamiya tape ought to work just fine).

There is one other part that seems to be missing – and this one’s a real frustrating problem (though not insoluble, and certainly not a “deal-breaker”). The Cobra II Thompson Trophy racer had a very distinctive arrowhead pitot tube – nose-mounted in place of the central cannon – and while this is shown clearly in the box art, it is nowhere to be found on the parts-sprue. Oddly, what looks to be an apparently shorter version of this distinctive arrowhead pitot tube is found on the Hasegawa P-400 kit, made to be mounted on the port wing outboard of the wing guns. I say “apparently shorter” – it may, in fact, be the ideal length, but I’ll need to mic it out from photos of the P-400 and the Cobra II before I can be sure. However, it’s clear that the Accurate Miniatures kit has two problems in building into the P-400 version – the cannon (which may be easily worked around) and the distinctive arrowhead pitot tube. This may be a bigger problem – I’ve found at least one photo of a late-model P-39Q that also has the arrowhead pitot tube. However, since the excellent Hasegawa P-400 is now available and has the correct pitot tube, this is hardly a liability – if you’re ready to scrap the Hasegawa kit for the single part. An easier solution would be to create the arrowhead wedge and glue it to the straight-shaft Accurate Miniatures pitot tube – something that our British cousins would call “fiddly.” Fiddly indeed!

A further benefit of having dueling kits on the market – while the Accurate Miniatures kit doesn’t mention nose-weights – an odd oversight – the Hasegawa kit indicates that 15 grams will be needed to ensure that it stays on its nose wheel. The kits are so close in dimension that it’s a reasonable assumption that the Accurate Miniatures kit will require the same weight. Just to be safe, I plan to use about 20 grams on each model – I like my trikes to be firmly-planted on terra firma.

I was pleased to note that the cockpit doors are molded in clear plastic – this makes far more sense than Monogram’s choice of putting a clear window into a colored-plastic door; considering the challenges of gluing clear parts without messing with their clarity, this works very well indeed. Hasegawa also chose to make their doors clear. Kudos to both manufacturers for this choice.

While no kit is perfect, the Accurate Miniatures P-39Q comes damned close. The detail is subtle and effective – recessed, subdued and base don all the sources I’ve checked, right on target. The instructions are superb, and they give information on the paint colors needed from half-a-dozen lines of paint: Federal Standards (a guideline, not a brand) as well as Tamiya, Humbrol, Revell, Testor’s and Gunze. By comparison, the Hasegawa instructions highlight the needed colors from only two paint lines: Creos and Mr. Color.

The items that aren’t “here” that I’ve noted aren’t inaccurate items, but rather apparently missing items – the distinctive arrowhead pitot tube, the 20mm cannon barrel – and those are easy to replace from the ever-popular spare parts bin that every serious modeler seems to maintain. There is one other item that seems to be lacking – not even “missing” but just damned difficult to do without – the distinctive nose markings found on the Cobra I and Cobra II. These are not unlike the “tulip” markings found on some late-war Bf 109 fighters – Erich Hartmann often flew tulip-marked fighters – and because of their sharp angles, they’ll be damned hard to mask off and paint. However, an after-market set of Luftwaffe tulip markings might be adapted far more easily – I plan to try this and will revise this review when the attempt has been completed, successful or not. While there are many attractive Airacobra markings available, this kit will be built as Tex Johnson’s Cobra II Thompson Trophy racer.

The Hasegawa Kit

I’ve read a few reviews of the Hasegawa kit that suggest it’s the best kit on the market. That’s a bold claim, but understandable. Head-to-head with the Accurate Miniatures kit, there’s not a lot to choose between the two. Both are exceptionally well-molded, virtually flash-free and both share a variety of features – minor items in the cockpit, for instance, parallel one another to a remarkable degree.

The Hasegawa kit has a few features that are superior to the Accurate Miniatures kit – I found this especially in the armament area. For instance, the Hasegawa kit’s gun barrels all appear hollowed-out, where the Accurate Miniatures are solid. Sure, they can be drilled out, but especially with the .30 caliber wing guns, the Accurate Miniatures parts are remarkably delicate – drilling will be a problem. Hasegawa has a few extra parts related to the wing guns – parts that seem unnecessary to me (they add complexity without adding to the appearance of the finished features. However, since so many modelers like added details, this isn’t much of a problem. I prefer features that benefit from being molded separately, but my standards are far from universal.

The Hasegawa kit is – as is the Accurate Miniatures kit – dimensionally on-target; even more important to those of us who aren’t “rivet-counters,” the kit looks like an Airacobra. Markings for the P-400 are for two aircraft – one serving in New Guinea and one in Guadalcanal. Both are excellent combat machines, famous and well-known (with many available references); would I be kvetching too much to bemoan the lack of RAF or Soviet markings? Both countries also used the P-400.

However, while the RAF chose not to put their Airacobras into combat, those are nonetheless attractive looking aircraft – and the Soviets did use their hand-me-down RAF P-400 in combat. Unlike the RAF, the Soviet army Air Force – the VVS – flew every combat plane they had available – and in 1941, even the P-400 was vastly superior to the surviving I-15s and I-16s, obsolescent aircraft that nonetheless carried so much of the brunt of combat in 1941 and 1942. Soviet markings would be welcome indeed – I’ll be looking for them among after-market decal developers, and will report on them if found.

Because of my long-term passion for the Guadalcanal campaign (I’ve published articles on it in several historical journals, and I’m currently writing an analysis of the aerial combat between Wildcats and Zeroes over Guadalcanal), I expect I’ll build the Hasegawa kit as one of the Guadalcanal ragged, rugged warriors. Though if this kit is even half as good as it looks in the box, I may be building several of them – and the New Guinea markings will be my second choice, unless, of course, I can find some Soviet markings for the P-400 version of the Airacobra.

Check my review of the Warbird Tech P-39/P-63 Airacobra & Kingcobra – it’s a good introductory source of information on the P-39, and invaluable to anybody building either of these kits. Also check out my review of Attack of the Airacobras - a book that proves this plane is far more than the Army Air Force and the RAF thought it was ... (both reviews can be found at my blog, Barnett on Aviation)