1/72 Hasegawa Brewster F2A-3 Buffalo USMC

[Stew Dapple]

Here is my representation of the Brewster F2A-3 flown by U.S. Marine Corps Captain William Humberd of VMF-221 at the Battle of Midway, 4th June 1942. Captain Humberd was one of the more successful Buffalo pilots that day - here is a copy of his combat report.

 

The kit is the Hasegawa kit from the U.S. Navy/Marine combo set. It includes a resin replacement nose section for the F2A-3 which had a 10-inch fuselage extension aft of the engine for extra fuel tankage. The kit is a very nice straightforward build, although I made several clumsy and/or sloppy errors in construction, painting and varnishing, but luckily most of these are not really apparent in the pictures. I used the Eduard canopy mask set, lap-straps from their Microfabric U.S. seatbelt set and a vacform canopy centre section from Squadron, after I failed to read the instructions and painted the canopy frames where no framing should be. Paints used were Sovereign Hobbies Colourcoats ACUS05 WW2 USN Light Gray, ACUS06 WW2 USN Blue Gray and ACUS30 Bronze Green 9 for the cockpit interior. Transfers were as provided by the kit and although there weren't many of them, they worked very well.

 

The build thread is here. Thanks to everyone who participated and to Jim Maas in particular who was unstinting in providing a lot of useful information and whose advice made my model considerably more faithful to the original than it would otherwise have been.

 

Anyway; pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for your attention gents

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

 

 

[Duncan B]

Ditto what I said in my post for your Dutch one, very impressive work on such a tiny kit.

 

Duncan B

[Cookenbacher]

Well done Stew, I'm really enjoying your "Pacific phase", and thanks for the link to the combat report, fascinating stuff.

[rob85]

Stunning stew, again!

 

Rob

[occa]

Well you can never build enough Buffaloes ....

 

Splendid model as is your Dutch one !!!
Cannot decide which one I like better ...

[stevej60]

That's a super little Buffalo Stew,great scheme,great finish!

[JWM]

Both your Buffalos are very nice indeed! 

Cheers

J-W

[CedB]

Another beauty Stew - lovely build, great paint effects, faultless model  

I like those aerials by the way (on both). That Infini Lycra Thread looks just right to my eye at this scale - sometimes you see it, sometimes you don't. Good stuff.