My sincere apologies for getting a little introspective (I'm British)! I did make at least one Mustang and Lightnings - beautiful aircraft all, and rather a lo

My sincere apologies for getting a little introspective (I'm British)! I did make at least one Mustang and Lightnings - beautiful aircraft all, and rather a lot of {B(n): n ∈ (US bomber designations)}. My Enola Gay was pretty decent. I made it with undercart down and with unusual foresight, I used plasticine and a ball bearing to weight the nose behind the cockpit so it sat correctly (bloody tricycle undercarriage - honestly, aero designers have no idea what trials they put modellers through 8) The ball bearing in question was given to me by a friend in West Germany, whose dad was a ociffer in the Royal Tank Regiment. It was a ball bearing from a Chieftain tank (probably mark I - this was 1976ish). I still have one of the really big BBs from one of those beasts somewhere - it's about 2.5" diameter. This one was about 0.5" so it fitted inside the fuselage. From memory, I made two Musties. One was nearly all silver with some black upper surfaces and another was the original UK build. I didn't realise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_P-51_Mustang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_P-51_Mustang that it was oriniated from here. What a cracking gift from our mates over the seas. That aircraft was an absolute belter. Not quite as pretty as a Spitfire (depending on your point of view, but that oval wing shape on the Spit is pretty iconic) but could give an FW 190 a right good kicking with a decent run up. The Mustie had a brilliant cockpit design from day one that started with the canopy - huge visibility. Later Spits and other fighters copied that, I think. Later on the Lightning (US) and the Mosquitto (UK) showed what happens if you make the fighter a bit bigger and deploy seriously manly weaponry on a platform that has much longer legs. Our Mossies were counted as two kills by the Axis, if they managed to shoot one down.