I’ve got a lot of plans for a lot of things, but when MiniArt announced they were releasing a new-tool 1/48 P-47N Thunderbolt, these wheels found themselves shoved to the front of the roadmap!

In total, there are six different wheel sets to choose from. For the impatient – here they are:

• DS48004 – Diamond Tread, Wheel “A”
• DS48005 – Diamond Tread, Wheel “B”
• DS48006 – Oval Tread, Wheel “A”
• DS48007 – Oval Tread, Wheel “B”
• DS48008 – Radial Tread, Wheel “A”
• DS48009 – Radial Tread, Wheel “B”

If you want to take a few tentative steps down the rabbit hole with me, keep reading! I find this stuff fascinating even if no one else does.

Two Wheel Types, Three Tread Options, Six Total Flavors

My original intent was to do two P-47N wheels – diamond and radial tread. But rabbit holes have a way of getting larger once you fall into them.

In the process of researching and hunting for reference pics, I uncovered two different wheel types. And then, in the background of one image, I saw what were very clearly oval treads.

Huh.

I know P-47s pretty well. I know that the -D typically wore BF Goodrich-supplied diamond tread tires, and when BF Goodrich couldn’t fill orders fast enough, US Royal Airplane block tread and Firestone cross tread tires were also used.

But until this image, I’d never seen oval tread tires on any P-47. So I started looking and found plenty more. Most are, annoyingly, potato quality. But enough to clearly see that they are oval treads.

Well, I’m not about to let a chance to play with oval wheels slip past, so…that’s how things expanded from two to six.

P-47N vs. P-47D Wheel Differences

P-47Ns ran different wheels and tires than prior P-47 types, and from what I’ve been able to gather, all of the differences trace back to one thing: the brakes.

The P-47N adopted GE multi-disc brakes, a significant step up from the fade-prone drum brakes found on P-47Ds and Ms. New brakes led to new wheels overall, and a move from six spokes to eight. New brakes also led to slightly wider tires – 34×9.9 vs. 34×9 – creating a slightly larger contact patch to further improve brake performance.

These proved significant enough upgrades that today, pretty much every surviving, flyable P-47 of any variant uses P-47N wheels.

Accuracy is Relative

I designed these wheels at 1:1 scale, in large part because there are a lot of dimensions involved, and it was easier to keep the math at inch-to-millimeter conversions, rather than adding scaling to the mix.

But designing everything accurately – from wheel rim thickness to the spacing between the diamond treads – was a spectacular failure. What looks spot on in Fusion barely shows up in 1/48 scale.

This meant going back and being more exaggerated in pretty much every aspect of the design, and particularly in the tread spacing. The result is final renders that look almost cartoony in some respects, like the huge gap I carved out around the wheel rim to increase separation from the tire for painting and overall aesthetics.

Or the chasms between the tread lugs:

But exaggerated features have a way of looking more correct when they’re printed. Just another way the “stage makeup” analogy applies to the modeling world, I guess.

What’s Next For Wheels?

I’ve just pushed these live and already had requests for 1/32 versions (Trumpeter’s P-47N comes with P-47D six-spoke wheels) and for P-47D wheels.

All of that is coming. I’ve got designs roughed in for P-47D wheels and most of the tread types (cross tread is a challenge). And I need to print some of these out at 1/32 to see if the exaggerated features need to be toned down for the larger scale.

I’ve also had a number of requests to offer physical prints of these and other products. And I’m happy to report that I’m working on it. There are a lot of things to sort out – from packaging and fulfillment to scaling production and so on. But the P-47N wheels will be among the first prints available as I get to that point. So stay tuned!