Corky Jr

[Greebo]

Guppy35 requested I skin this 80th Fighter Squadron P-38G.

Lt. Cornelius Marcellus Smith, Jr. was assigned to the New Guinea-based 8th Fighter Group's 80th Fighter Squadron in late 1942. At the time the squadron was equipped with the P-39 Airacobra but soon re-equipped with the P-38 Lightning. Until June 1943 he failed to engage any Japanese fighters but on June 21 was credited with three victories and a probable on a B-25 escort mission. By the time his tour of duty had ended in May 1944 he had raised his score to eleven kills, all but one Japanese fighters, and had been promoted to Captain.

"Corky Jr" is the P-38H Smith was flying when he claimed his fourth and fifth kills in October 1943. It has the 80th FS's bright green unit markings of bright green spinners and vertical tail tops.

[lyric1]

 

[Vraciu]

Beautiful job.

[Devil 505]

Just stunning.

[oboe]

If that doesn't get Guppy out of his Spitfire I don't know what will!   Superb.

[TequilaChaser]

Beautiful work on that skin, Greebo 👍

[JimmyD3]

  Very Nice!!

[Nefarious]

Love that weathering/wear around the cockpit. Looks amazing. Great work!

[Drano]

It's an 80th bird. What not to like? Bueno!

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk

[Hajo]

Outstanding! 

[Vraciu]

G, are your exhaust stains covered in the build log?

[Guppy35]

That's my baby!  Looks great Greebo!  Thanks.

[Greebo]

G, are your exhaust stains covered in the build log?

Well this is what I wrote about the exhaust stains in the build log:-

I'm going to start with the heat and exhaust stains. Looking at photos of wartime P-38s it seems the exhaust gas on a P-38 exits behind the turbochargers and over time creates dark stains on the upper vertical tails with a little on the tops of the booms. Around the turbochargers themselves a light pinkish stain is often very noticeable. This seems to extend forward of the exhaust outlet so I assume this is down to heat discolouring the paint and metal as much as lead deposits from the fuel.

So I create two new layers for “Heat stains” and “Exhaust stains” so I can later edit the opacity or colour of each effect independently. These go above the stretching mask layer in the weathering stack as I do not want these layers to be altered by this mask. These stains are sprayed on in red on one half of a boom and a vertical tail. Some careful editing of the stains on top of the booms is needed due to the large amount of vertical stretching of the texture here. The result is not ideal but it isn't too bad given the limitations of this old shape. Once I am happy with the results I paste these stains wherever else they are needed making sure everything lines up left to right. Then I change the colours from red and alter both layers' opacity as per the screenshot below.

The above is pretty much what I did on the new P-38 shape as well except I didn't have to worry about the annoying texture stretching issues or masks to disguise it. In one respect its harder to do the exhaust and heat stains on the new shape P-38s at they run across a lot of different UVs; both sides and the top of the booms, the tops of the rad pods and both sides of the vertical tails. So some careful editing is needed to make the stains blend imperceptibly across the UV borders. Its easier to do this using a false colour like red as it shows up any mismatches in opacity better.

[Vraciu]

Very good.  Thanks.  I'll give this a try.   It's the last thing I have left to do.

[whiteman]

Looks great!