1:72 U.S. Serial & Code Numbers White

Nine sizes of numeral on one sheet

The serial number on the rudder and the code characters on the sides of the fuselage belong to American machines of the Second World War as inseparably as the star on the wing. But the height of those characters was not uniform: on a small fighter it differed from a bomber, a tactical number on the fin looked one way and an identification band on the tail another. This sheet solves that by offering nine height steps corresponding to six, eight, twelve, sixteen, twenty, twenty-four, twenty-eight, thirty-two and thirty-six inches of real size.

The white variant is meant for dark finishes. It shows best over an olive drab top coat, over the British brown-green camouflage of Allied deliveries and over the dark blue naval shade, where dark characters would be lost.

What to watch out for

• Lay the numerals one at a time and watch the spacing; a continuous block is spotted on a model at once.
• A truly gloss base belongs under white, or the texture of the finish shows through the thin film.
• On a riveted surface apply the decal softener in thin layers and let the film dry between them.
• Keep the leftover characters in the dark, as white printing yellows with time in the light.

The package holds the printed sheet itself, no plastic or photo-etched parts.

A practical note on composition: American codes were made up of letters as well as numerals and their spacing was never perfectly regular, because they were applied to the fuselage by hand through a stencil. A slight irregularity therefore does a model no harm, quite the opposite. What does leap out at once is uneven height of the characters within one inscription, so choose all the pieces from the same height step and do not mix them according to what happens to be left on the sheet.