by Madoc Pope

Date: June 7th 1944

Here we have photos of one of the more famous fightercraft in World War Two: the Lockheed P-65 Lightning. This space superiority fighter was the best the Allies had during World War Two and it gave Allied pilots a decided advantage over the Nazi's and their TIE fighters. This particular spacefighter is one of the more notable ones even among all the other Lightnings for this is the one that Captain Luke "Skywalker" Hamil (radio callsign "Red 5") flew in the daring raid against the Nazi's secret Lunar battlestation, the Death Star.

Flying his Lightning, which he nicknamed the "Princess Leia," through the trench-like canyons which made up the Death Star battlestation, Captain Hamil led his squadron (Fighter Squadron 277 - The "Rebels") in an attack which destroyed the Death Star's mega-laser cannon. The success of this raid allowed the Allies to successfully land their forces on Moon. The invasion forces which landed were then able to secure the rest of the Death Star and push the Nazis back. With the Moon once again in Allied hands the Nazis no longer held the high ground in war and the tide turned against them.

In the space combat which occurred during this daring raid there are reports that the Luftwaffe's top ace, Gruppenfuherer Darth Vader, may have actually been shot down by Captain Hamil. In the chaos of that day's combat however, no immediate confirmation of this victory was able to be made.

The Lockheed P-65 Lightning is equipped with the latest THX-1138 search and target LIDAR system in the nose of the craft, the Incom R2D2 astromech avionics system, and the quad mount of the ILM KX9 laser cannons which give the Lightning its blasting power. A fast and capable fighter, the P-65 Lightning is truly one of the greats!

The Model

This is a Fine Molds X-Wing Fighter made pretty much straight out of the box, at least as far as assembly goes. A number of other folks have written about how great the Fine Molds X-Wing kit is so I won't try and repeat those details here. Suffice to say the folks at Fine Molds really did an excellent job in designing this kit and while it didn't literally fall together out of the box it came pretty close!

I wanted to depict this spacecraft in something other than the typical beat- up Star Wars views of it and I thought it would look perfect in a natural metal finish. So not only did I change the genre of the subject I also made sure the bird was squeaky clean by depicting it in a bright & shiny metal finish! To do this I used metal foils.

At first I tried using good old Reynolds Wrap aluminium foil and Microscale's Micro Foil Adhesive. This worked fairly well and I was pretty much satisfied with the results. As I wanted to depict some variations in the metal surfaces, I went out and got some Bare Metal foil to use on the panels I wanted shinier than I could get with the Reynolds Wrap. From the very first bit of Bare Metal I put on this model I was sold! Bare Metal is awesome! It is super thin, is exceptionally easy to apply over almost any surface, and shows off an excellent level of detail underneath the foil. It is also pretty forgiving in terms of peeling it off and burnishing it back down again. I eventually covered most of this model in the Bare Metal foil. I used Bright Chrome, Matte Aluminium, and Black Chrome as well as leaving the original areas I covered with Reynolds Wrap.

In keeping with the era the "P-65" was to be flying in, I painted the cockpit interior in Zinc Chromate Green and the landing gear wells in Zing Chromate Yellow. I even did the open paneling on the inner sides of the wings this way as well. The "Lunar Invasion Stripes" (as opposed to the D-Day ones) were a very simple matter of a painted white background and strips of the Black Chrome Bare Metal foil. Tamiya, Testors, and Model Masters paints were the ones I used. This kit is held together with Tenax-7R and Zap-A-Gap superglue. I found out, the hard way, that even the fumes from drying superglue with destroy the finish of Bare Metal foils. All in all I spent about forty hours all told in making this kit.

This is my first model contest entry in some twenty plus years! It is also the very first completely new build model kit that I have completed in twenty plus years as well!

Image: Top/front view

Image: Port side

Image: Looking down