COBI P-51D Mustang Set 5860

COBI's P-51D Mustang is a 1:48 model built from 150 blocks, 20 cm long with a 23 cm wingspan, in wartime markings. All details are printed; no stickers.

This scale exists so the bombers have an escort

COBI introduced 1:48 for Second World War fighters for a specific reason, and it is worth knowing before you buy: at this scale the Mustang stands correctly beside COBI's large bombers — the B-17, the B-24, the Lancaster — rather than towering over them as a 1:32 fighter would.

That matches what the aircraft actually did. The Mustang's significance is not that it was the best fighter of the war, though it has a claim. It is that it was the first fighter that could fly all the way to Berlin and back with the bombers.

Before it, escorts turned for home somewhere over the Low Countries and the bombers went on alone into the worst of it. Losses in early 1944 were becoming unsustainable. The Mustang's internal fuel plus drop tanks changed the arithmetic of the daylight campaign in a matter of months, and German fighter losses rose sharply because they now had to fight all the way in and all the way out.

Hermann Göring is said to have known the war was lost when he saw Mustangs over Berlin. Whether he said it or not, the reasoning holds.

In the COBI range

Set 5869 is the earlier P-51B at this scale, and 5846 the 1:32 Top Gun Mustang. The bombers it escorts are 5749 and 5750 (B-17), 5739 (B-24) and 5758 and 5759 (Lancaster).

Specifications

Pieces: 150 · Scale: 1:48 · No stickers
Model dimensions: 20 × 23 × 9 cm (7.9 × 9.1 × 3.5 in)