So, the wings are of a laminar flow design. I was visiting the Flying heritage Museum and was looking at the Mustangs wings. I noticed that the rivits and panel joints had been filled and sanded smooth.
Were all P51’s like this? I seem to recall P 51 kits with rivets and panel lines on the wings. Am I right or has dementia started creeping in?
Yes and of course
No and to complicate things further:
Somewhere in between.
Read this:
Factory fresh vs war weary. Paint and putty lost while flying.
Factory paint or stripped down to natural metal.
Rivets and edges don’t play nice with laminar flow.
Paint and putty has weight, weight consumes more fuel and impacts performance.
To putty or not to putty, that is the question.
I think the benefit from paint & putty outweighed the penalties from
extra weight.
B-17’s in NMF was to save production time & cost, not for weight reduction.
When we build models we make a choice about what the model should represent or show. Fresh from factory or a shot up wreck in a bomb crater or something in between. This is a matter of taste/opinion and we all know the proverb about opinions and a-holes: Everybody has got one …
