Airacomet - WIP

Mick

Mick

SOH-CM-2024
Well, David and I have been dragging ourselves, kicking and screaming, into the post-WW2 era. Our current work in progress is the Bell P-59 Airacomet, the first American jet. Nice looking and nice flying, only two things kept it from becoming a great fighter: it had terrible performance and it was a lousy gun platform.

The Airacomet went through several versions: XP-59A, YP-59A, P-59A and P-59B. Most (possibly all) YPs and all P-59As were updated to P-59B standards, which makes life a bit easier for modelers and painters. We modeled only the P-59B, but were able to show almost all of the type's history in a series of paints. Only the XP-59A, with its flush canopy and rounded wing and tail tips, is missing.

Here's a YP-59A updated to near P-59B standards, wearing the mid-1943 star and red-bordered bar that I've always been partial to.

01OD43.jpg

Those oversized, billboard style wing insignia were typical of the type throughout its service life.

And here's another updated YP-59A, this one marked to 1944 standards.

02OD44.jpg


"Smokey Stover" was the first jet to land in Alaska.

03Smokey.jpg


Here's a P-59A with an early example of a "buzz number." Note how the buzz number on the fuselage extends down onto the ventral strake. It looks like an error, but that's how they looked on every photo I could find of an Airacomet with a buzz number.

04PJ611.jpg


This updated YP-59A had an open second cockpit in front of the pilot. The first 2-seat Airacomets had their guns removed and were used to carry a flight test engineer, and later VIPs for jet joy rides. "Mystic Mistress" was a drone controller, and she retained her armament in case she had to shoot down an errant drone.

05MM1.jpg


Later "Mystic Mistress" was dressed in overall glossy black.

06MM2.jpg


"Reluctant Robot" was a DP-59B drone.

07RR.jpg


The P-59 lasted long enough to wear the post-war insignia with the red bars.

08412th.jpg


(Continued below)
 
The Navy was in on the Airacomet program almost from the beginning. They received this YP-59A in late 1943. They dubbed it the YF2L-1 and wrung it out at the Naval Air Test Center at Patuxent River, Maryland.


09N1.jpg


Four years later they were still flying that bird, by then in the utility livery.


10N2.jpg


NATC's Tactical Test Division was still operating this YF2L-2 (P-59B) in 1947.


11N3.jpg


It seems curious that NACA doesn't seem to have done anything with the P-59. We set that right with this fictional paint.


12NACA.jpg


This Alaska Air Command livery is fictional too. I couldn't resist those colorful arctic high visibility markings. Too bad the color red always seems to look smudged in jpegs posted to the web. It doesn't look like that on the model!


13Arctic.jpg


Well, as long as we're playing "What If," how about: What if the Thunderbirds were established in 1948?


14Tbirds.jpg


I won't use the "S" word, but here's not much left to be done on this project. Watch here and FlightSim.com for a release, date not predictable yet, but sometime :censored:.
 
That's looks awesome Mick ... looking forward to it. Lots of work there ... appreciate the variety of paints too. :applause:
 
Outstanding, Mick! Thanks. :medals: I'll definately be getting this one and the Smokey Stover paint. :jump:

I was commissioned by the NASM some years back to build a P-59 for the opening of the Pioneer Jet exhibit. I did "Smoky Stover!" Posted these in another thread a couple weeks ago.

Duckie
 
Hi, Mick, Tell David to add some transparency to the window glass material and this thing should work in FSX!

:icon29: :guinness: :jump:

Paul
 
Duckie said:
...I was commissioned by the NASM some years back to build a P-59 for the opening of the Pioneer Jet exhibit. I did "Smoky Stover!"...Duckie
Click to expand...

Wow, that's quite an honor! :medals:

Beautiful model, too! It shows that the honor was well deserved.

I see that you made the "Smokey Stover" lettering red. I got blue from an on-line scan of a plastic model decal sheet, and my primary reference, an old Aerophile article, says the colors were unknown. Did you establish that it was red, or was that your best guess?

I ask because if you're sure it was red, I can change my paint before we release.
 
PutPut said:
Hi, Mick, Tell David to add some transparency to the window glass material and this thing should work in FSX!

:icon29: :guinness: :jump:

Paul
Click to expand...

Hi Paul,

Neither of us has FSX installed, so we wouldn't know how much to lighten the glass. Can you give us a guestimate, like "make it XX% more transparent" or something ike that?

Maybe David would send you one of the model files and you could fiddle with it until it's right, then David could make the same adjustment to the other models.

Would the reflectivity be the same, or would that require adjustment as well?

I wonder what else might need to be changed. Flight model perhaps?
 
Mick said:
Wow, that's quite an honor! :medals:

Beautiful model, too! It shows that the honor was well deserved.

I see that you made the "Smokey Stover" lettering red. I got blue from an on-line scan of a plastic model decal sheet, and my primary reference, an old Aerophile article, says the colors were unknown. Did you establish that it was red, or was that your best guess?

I ask because if you're sure it was red, I can change my paint before we release.
Click to expand...

Thanks Mick. I'll check my references on that and see. I can't recall if I had a specific color reference or, absent a reference, used "modeller's license!"

Duckie
 
Usually the flight models will mostly work from one sim to another. The flight model for the FS9 D-ware Corsair series was actually developed in beta's of FSX..........

If you want I can take a peek at it in FSX, at least you won't have an issue with invisible props....

Cheers: T
 
Neither David nor I have any interest at all in FSX, so we don't really care if the plane works in that sim, and we're both much too busy to do the requisite testing and tweaking to get it working properly.

However, we are both more than willing to have an FSX version if you or anyone who flies in FSX wants to do the work.

Once we get everything ready for release for FS9, I'm sure David would be willing to send the final FSDS files to whoever wants to do the conversion. We've done that before when folks asked if they could make CFS2 versions of some of our planes.

I guess it would be a matter of fiddling with the transparency in the canopy glass and fiddling with the reflectivity to make the silver paints look right in the new sim. And whatever else seemed necessary or desirable.

David's models are matte finished and non-reflective. I've made glossy and reflective and glossy-&-reflective copies, as required for the paints, and then un-reflectorized the VC instrument plane in the reflective models. So David made a fighter with and without guns, a drone and a drone controller. I started with his four models and ended up with nine. Anyway, that's what we've got for models to be tweaked.

I'd be pleased to allow modifications to my paints if that was necessary to make them look right in FSX. I'd imagine that the reflective paints might benefit from some alpha channel tweakage to optimize them for FSX.
 
Mick

During your research for this project did you stumble over the only Aircomet that actually flew within the ETO?

One was shipped to the UK and was flown head to head against the Meteor at Glosters Moreton Valence facility

in late 1944 --- Which makes the Navy paints ironic because at the time RAF Moreton Valence was actually

an RN base.


Leif
 
Yes, I found both a drawing and a photo or two.

The plane that went to the RAF was an unmodified YP-59A, so it looked much more like an XP than a P-59B or updated YP or A model. Oddly, it differed from all the other Airacomets in having a prominent pitot tube high up on the leading edge of the vertical fin. I don't know what that was all about.

Since it was sent out of the country, it seems probably that it never received the P-59B mods that the rest of the YPs got: the clipped wingtips and vertical tail, the modified armament layout and the ventral fin. I didn't paint that plane because it didn't fit on our model, which has all the the B-model mods. We didn't feel compelled to build an XP or early, unmodified YP. As far as paint schemes, that only precluded a USAAF one with the no-bars national insignia and the RAF one.

I guess there's no reason not to put those paints on our models, but I never liked that version of the US insignia, and camo schemes like the RAF plane had give me fits. I'm just not very good at those wavy, shaded color demarcations, and I'm not particularly attracted to camouflage schemes anyway.
 
Well, Mick, I dug out my references for the P-59 and the "official" comment on the color of the Smokey Stover nose art is "UNKNOWN."

The way I came up with my color selection for the lettering was a SWAG. One of my main sources of reference was the December 1977 issue of AEROPHILE magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3 (which I still have). In this mag is a B/W photo of Smokey, front port quarter showing the nose are to good advantage.

There was a lot of "photo interpreting" going on here. Although a B/W, the lettering appears to be a solid color outlined in black. Smokey's clothing is assumed to be blue, and the lettering is not the same shade as the clothing. So I chose red oulined in black.

For all I know the lettering could have been a lighter shade of blue. At the time I built my model there were no known color photos of SS, and the historian and associate curator of the NASM exhibit couldn't loacte any colors in their archives.

Here's a better shot of the nose art I did.

Anyway, looking forward to your release of these cool looking skins. :applause::applause:

Duckie
 
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