North American P-51 Mustang Pt. 4

Lifelike Decals
1/72, 1/48 & 1/32 scales

Reviewed by Floyd S. Werner Jr.

HyperScale is proudly sponsored by Squadron.com

Hot on the heels of their Col. John Landers ‘Big Beautiful Doll’ release, Lifelike has released another stellar sheet on the P-51.  This release contains both the P-51B and D variants. 

The sheet comes packaged in a zip lock bag to safeguard the decals.  The instructions are printed on two single sided A-4 sheets along with a half page of stencil placement instructions.  The Lifelike Decals instruction sheets are like little history snippets on each aircraft and pilot.  Pay particular attention if you are going to build the checkered nosed version as there are different decals for the Revell and Tamiya kits.  That is the type of attention to detail that you can expect from Lifelike. 

The decals themselves are printed on four decal sheets by Cartograf and Microscale.  The actual aircraft markings are printed by Cartograf, while the rest of the markings are done by Microscale, including the American stars and bars. 

The first aircraft is ‘Contrary Mary’ which features the black and white checkers of the 78th FG.  It is highlighted with red surrounds on the checkerboard.  This makes for one colorful aircraft but it also has a yellow canopy frame.  The aircraft is depicted post-war so it has buzz numbers under the wings.

The next aircraft is ‘Jackie’ flown by Lg. John ‘Wild Bill’ Crump of the 356th FG.  This particular aircraft went through three different painting iterations and Lifelike includes markings for two of them.

The next Mustang is a P-51B from the CBI theatre flying with the 51st FG out of Kunming, China in September 1944.  This aircraft is named ‘Jeanne III’ and features Los Angeles City Limits on the side.  The shark mouth is what sets this aircraft apart, along with the yellow stripes.

Aircraft four is a famous airplane, ‘Detroit Miss’ flown by Lt. Urban Drew when he shot down two Me-262s while assigned to the 361st FG.  This sheet has the tail, wing tip and canopy framing as a blue background in keeping with the squadron color.

To say I love these decals is an understatement.  They are printed perfectly in register with good color saturation, typical of Cartograf and Microscale.  They are meticulously researched by Lifelike.  The level of detail is shown by the fact that you get different decals for the checkers to fit the Tamiya kit and the Airfix kit.  The easy thing would have been to just include one set of checkers and be done with it.  Lifelike doesn’t do easy, they do it right.  I can’t think of a single thing to criticize this sheet on.  It is perfect for any Mustang.

Thanks to Lifelike Decals for these samples.

Text and Images Copyright © 2020 by Floyd S. Werne Jr.
Page Created 20 February, 2020
Last updated 20 February, 2020

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