Yellow Wings Hellcat

[Enzo the Magnificent]

The First World War had been a shock for the US public. After decades of following a non-interventionist policy, the US had allowed its president, Woodrow Wilson, to take them into a war that – in the opinion of a large part of the public – had not threatened the domestic safety of the United States.

Instead, the war served to increase domestic tensions. A fair proportion of US citizens were of German extraction and they resented the fact that they own country had been involved in a war against their “altes Vaterland”.

The first sign of a backlash against the war was when Congress rejected Wilson’s most cherished condition of the yet to be signed Treaty of Versailles, the League of Nations. This ensured that the Treaty was delayed, but to the chagrin of Britain and France. After President Wilson suffered a stroke in late 1919, his vice president Thomas R Marshall took over. Marshall and Wilson had never seen eye to eye and Marshall’s attempts to govern the country were continually blocked by members of Wilson’s administration. When it became clear that Wilson was unlikely to recover sufficiently to return to work, Congress forced a vote of no confidence and the eventual impeachment of President Wilson. An early election led his being replaced by his former vice-president, Thomas R Marshall, whose isolationist leanings reflected the general mood of the population and whose valiant attempts to govern the country properly in the face of opposition from Wilson’s “treacherous” administration had endeared him to the public. Isolationist feeling grew with many Americans feeling that they did not need the rest of the world, and that they were fine making decisions concerning peace on their own.

With this aim in mind, US foreign policy sought to reduce the chances of ever becoming embroiled in a foreign war again. One of the main concerns was that the US had seen fit to join the war because of an alliance with the United Kingdom. Alliances were thought to make war more likely because the US could not control the actions of the other party in that alliance. Therefore, the US sought to withdraw from alliances and to replace them with non-aggression pacts instead.

Relations with the United Kingdom and France started to become strained early in 1920 as President Marshall started to have doubts about the Treaty of Versailles and refused to support its imposition on Germany. Marshall was of the opinion that the treaty would humiliate Germany and would only lead to further conflict in the future. The USA would have no part in it and withdrew from the treaty negotiations.

The US became very suspicious of British intentions, especially as the British fleet seemed to have a very high profile presence in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The United Kingdom was formally allied with Japan, which made the US even more nervous. Therefore the US pushed very hard for a naval treaty to prevent an arms race.

The Washington Naval Treaty was signed on 6 February 1923 and limited the naval armaments of the five victors of the first world war; Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the US. Britain and the US agreed to hold to equal tonnages of capital ships and aircraft carriers. However, Britain currently had a fleet with a higher tonnage than that agreed, which would have required a number of their capital ships to be scrapped. The US decided to wait and see and did not embark on a shipbuilding programme to bring its fleet up to treaty levels.

The other concern for the US was the naval alliance between Japan and the UK, which had been in place for two decades. However, to Marshall’s surprise, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was terminated on 17 August 1923. Japan saw no further need for the alliance as its enemies in the area, Russia and China, were no longer a hindrance to Japanese expansion. Britain was, however.

The UK was actually interested in renewing the alliance, but the government allowed itself to be swayed by the advice of the Canadian Prime Minister, Arthur Meighen. Meighen thought that a further alliance would serve to alienate the US. Canada did not wish its powerful southern neighbour to hold any ill will towards it, as relations were already strained given Canada’s status as a Dominion of the British Empire.

Meighen made an abortive attempt to form a so-called “Four Power Treaty” between Britain, France, Japan and the US. However, mutual distrust between Britain and the US and increasing tensions between Britain and Japan caused the treaty to founder.

The US saw an opportunity to bolster its own defences in the Pacific and entered into a non-aggression pact with Japan. This pact adopted some of clauses of the failed Four Power Treaty in that the US made assurances that it would not exercise any military force west of the international date line, except for defence of the country, its territories and possessions. The territories and possessions were where the controversy lay as many of them lay in the area where Japan was looking to increase its sphere of influence and could conceivably cause tension and threaten the non-aggression pact.

With that in mind, the US voluntarily commenced withdrawals from the Phillipines, Guam, Wake Island and even American Samoa, which was actually well within the stated American sphere of influence. Impressed by this honourable act of good faith, Japan decided that it could trust the US.

However, all was not well between the US and Britain. Britain was frustrated because the Washington Naval Treaty required her to reduce the size of the Royal Navy, of which she was justifiably proud and was dragging her feet in complying with the treaty. Rather than actively removing ships from service, the Royal Navy only did so when the ships reached the end of their service lives. These actions caused equal frustrations on the part of the Americans who therefore started a major shipbuilding programme to increase their navy to the maximum size allowed by the Washington Naval Treaty.

Throughout the 1920s, a naval arms race occurred between Britain and the US – one which was supposed to have been prevented by the Washington Naval Treaty. Improved technology allowed for improved submarines and both sides increased their numbers of these new weapons. By 1930 it became clear that the Washington Treaty was not working. Both the US and the UK has managed to neatly sidestep the treaty by introducing newer, larger classes of capital ships. These were maintained to treaty levels but the previous generations of capital ships were redesignated as battlecruisers rather than being withdrawn from service. Something needed to be done.

France and Italy, who were both lagging behind in the arms race, pushed for a renegotiation of the Washington Treaty and this occurred in London in October 1930. Japan was very ambivalent about the proceedings as she was happy to see tensions raised between Britain and the US, which would ensure that the British Atlantic fleet would receive the lion’s share of ships for home defence. In any case, Japan had been pulling the same tricks as Britain and the US and no longer felt too constrained by the treaty.

The London negotiations very soon broke down. It became clear that there would be no new naval treaty and that the Washington Treaty was dead in the water. An acrimonious final meeting on 27 October 1930 led to both the US and the UK withdrawing from the Washington Treaty.

The way was now open for both sides to increase their naval air power. While it had been relatively easy to sidestep treaty requirements with regard to capital ships, the same was not true of aircraft carriers. An old capital ship can become a battlecruiser at the stroke of a pen, but a carrier remains a carrier.

Unfettered now by the treaty, the US embarked on a major programme of carrier building. Carriers require aircraft and these were sought in vast numbers. Technological advances saw the introduction of monoplane arcraft aboard carriers, the first being the Brewster F2A Buffalo which entered service in April 1936. This was soon followed by the Grumman F4F Wildcat in December 1937.

By 1936, the US Navy had sixteen carriers in service and the American public felt very safe within their borders. Although war clouds were brewing in the Pacific between Japan and the UK, the US felt that the trust between themselves and Japan, backed up by a non-aggression pact and a US Pacific fleet that was larger than many navies meant that the Pacific seaboard was under no threat. The eastern seaboard was also under little threat. The outbreak of war between Germany and an Anglo-French alliance in April 1937 meant that the Royal Navy had its mind on other things. The US Atlantic fleet defended the East coast and ensured that British convoys to and from Canada did not enter US territorial waters. The Germans tended to trust the Americans after the US refusal to have anything to do with the Treaty of Versailles and so German U-boats never made any attempt to compromise American waters.

The US policy of non-intervention had paid off. While other countries were engaged in war and had toned down their aircraft with camouflage, the US Navy saw no need to do so. Their myriads of aircraft were proudly painted in bright colours. Why hide? The US Navy had no reason to do so.

Nevertheless, new aircraft designs were sought to replace the F2As and F4Fs. Grumman produced a larger and far more powerful derivative of their successful F4F which first flew on 26 June 1939. Known as the F6F Hellcat, it entered service in September 1940 with VF-41, aboard USS Ranger, assigned to NAS Norfolk, Virginia. Using identical markings to the Wildcats which had previously been used by the squadron, this aircraft is depicted after its first week of duty.

[Daniel]

Wow, lots of effort put into that story, if the build is half as good I cannot wait.

Dan

[Enzo the Magnificent]

Wow, lots of effort put into that story, if the build is half as good I cannot wait.

Nah... that's your lot. I'm knackered now. The build will be rubbish. Just like all my others.

[AnonymousDFB1]

Wow, some thought went into that story.

[Enzo the Magnificent]

Hellcats are great! In the past few months I have built three of them, all from the Eduard 1/48 kit. I have another five in the stash. The Eduard Fleet Air Arm Dual-Combo kit has to be the best value kit ever!

Having built an F4U-1 in the early two-greys scheme, I started looking around for the decals to provide me with an F6F in this scheme. No luck. The only decals available came in the Hobby Boss kit.

I wasn’t too keen on building the HB kit, which has a number of outline issues. In my experience, this is pretty much par for the course for HB and Trumpeter. (More on these issues later.) I wondered whether I could justify buying the kit simply for the decal sheet. Then along came this groupbuild and my problem was solved. I could build the HB kit as a whiffer and keep the decals for a forthcoming Eduard build. After all, it doesn’t matter if the whiff has outline issues, does it?

Then I gave things a bit more thought. I noticed that the Eduard F6F-5N kit has two fuselages available, one with a -3 style early cockpit. Maybe I could graft the Eduard fuselage onto the HB wings, thereby solving the major outline error of the HB kit. If it were possible, it would mean that I could use HB parts to build a folded-wing Hellcat at some time in the future.

So that’s my intention. My scenario is “What if the US had never had to face an aggressive Japan and so never starting applying camouflage to their aircraft?” This will be a very early F6F-3 - I might even designate it as an F6F-1 - in the yellow-wings colour scheme. If will represent an aircraft of VF-41 aboard USS Ranger in 1940. The scheme is actually one worn by a pre-war F4F-3.

The Eduard fuselage grafted onto a Hobby Boss wing explains my thread subtitle of “The Frankencat”.

A quick forecast of the work to be done:

Adapt the HB cockpit parts to fit in the Eduard fuselage. The Eduard instrument panel was left over from the build so that can be used.

The lower section of the Eduard fuselage will have to be removed to allow the one-piece HB lower wing to fit. The HB upper wings will not butt up against the Eduard fuselage, so a lot of filling of the wing locating area will be required.

Likewise with the tailplane. Slots for the locating tabs will need to be cut and the lower parts of the locating grooves filled to provide a measure of structural integrity.

The HB cowling may not match the cross section of the Eduard fuselage. If that is so, I will saw the cowling front from the HB component and mate it as best I can to the cowling sides from Eduard.

The HB kit has a rudder moulded as part of the fuselage halves. This will need to be removed and fitted as though it was the Eduard part.

I will use Eduard wheels to represent the early narrow wheels. Hopefully everything else will be a straightforward build from the HB parts. We shall see…

Here goes nothing!

[Enzo the Magnificent]

Firstly, the obligatory box shot. Also shown are the components left over from an Eduard kit which I will use. The Eduard F6F-5N provides resin wheels to replace the very narrow wheels in the kit. The narrow wheels are only suitable for the earliest Hellcats and so will be ideal for this model. I’ve also shown the left-over cowling parts. As will become apparent later, there may be some fit problems if I use the HB cowling, so I may use the Eduard bits mated to the front of the HB moulding. I’m hoping that I don’t have to, however.

Sprue shots.

The HB kit is exceptionally well moulded. It’s such a shame that the fuselage is a caricature of the real thing. The concern is the cockpit area and the fuselage sides behind the cockpit. The fuselage sides should curve inwards and then outwards again, giving a concave appearance to the spine of the fuselage. The HB kit presents this area as a straight taper. The result is that the cockpit is far too wide in appearance. The cockpit interior has to be wider to fill the gap, with the result that the interior is no longer 1/48.

Compare the corresponding parts from the Eduard and HB kits below.

The Eduard instrument panel is dwarfed by the HB one.

Likewise with the Eduard canopy. It will actually fit inside the HB canopy, with room enough to rattle around. The Hellcat isn’t the only HB kit where this happens. A similar situation occurs in their 1/72 A-7 – the Fujimi canopy will quite happily sit inside the HB one!

[Enzo the Magnificent]

Okay… enough messing about. To work!. My intention is to mostly use the HB cockpit parts, with the exception of the Eduard instrument panel. At the moment I don’t know if I will use the HB seat – it is far too big. If the worst comes to the worst and the HB parts cannot be adapted to the Eduard fuselage, I will rob a cockpit from an unbuilt Eduard kit in the stash and replace that cockpit with an Aires set when the time comes. But I don’t really want to do that as the object of the exercise is to use only leftover Eduard parts.

The cockpit rear bulkhead (shown here against the corresponding Eduard part) has a row of rivets on it that match quite well the required profile for the Eduard fuselage.

Oddly enough, the HB cockpit floor is actually smaller than required to fit inside the Eduard fuselage. Therefore a piece of 20 thou plasticard was cut to match the required shape and was used as a base for the HB cockpit floor.

This is the Eduard fuselage showing the bits that need to be sawn off.

The Eduard fuselage with the required area cut out to match up to the HB wing centre section. I’ve also added some milliput ledges to give the cockpit floor something to sit on. Doesn’t look very neat, I know, but it will all be hidden.

Further work includes cutting out slots for the tailplane lugs. The Eduard tailplanes are simply butt joints into a recess. The forward edges of the recesses have been filled with milliput to ensure that there isn’t a gap between the Eduard fuselage and HB tailplanes

The components for the hybrid Hobby Boss/Eduard cockpit. I originally intended to use a Spitfire seat as the HB seat looks far too large. In the end I opted to use the HB seat as supplied.

I also got a bit messed up trying to replicate the shape of the armour plate, so I didn’t bother with any armour at all. In this whiff, the USN is so powerful that they don’t bother with armour plating during peacetime – which fits in well with the colour scheme. Armour plating would be fitted during transition to war.

All ready for priming and painting.

[TaiidanTomcat]

Can't wait to see more!

[Enzo the Magnificent]

Cockpit components painted and ready for installation. I’ve used some spare Eduard seatbelts.

The frankencockpit installed in the port fuselage half, ready to join the fuselage halves. As I originally surmised, the HB seat is too big to fit comfortably in the Eduard cockpit. It fouls the throttle quadrant on the port console and has ended up being squidged to starboard slightly. If I were ever to build this sort of project again, I would probably buy the Aires cockpit intended for the Eduard kit, or use Eduard parts and put the Aires cockpit into an Eduard build.

The fuselage closed up and temporarily mated to the wing centre section. This is the fourth Eduard Hellcat fuselage I have built and I have never yet managed to get a perfect fit on the spine immediately aft of the cockpit. As you can see, there are some gaps between the wing centre section and the fuselage. These will be bridged with plastic card to provide a bit of strength to the joint and then filled with milliput.

The wing centre section showing small pieces of plastic card which hopefully will bridge the gap.

And here is the Eduard fuselage sat next to the HB one, displaying the difference in width at the cockpit and spine.

Edited August 2, 2010 by Enzo Matrix

[Ian]

There's an awful lot of work going into this/them. Really like where it's/they're heading.

Ian

[TaiidanTomcat]

Nice job on that cockpit!! appreciate the side by side comparison as well

[Enzo the Magnificent]

Nice job on that cockpit!!

Thank you, glad you like it.

The build is taking me slightly out of my comfort zone. I would usually simply buy an Eduard cockpit set and bung the pre-coloured panel in. But as I decided to use only the bits I had available, I had to put in a bit more work on the instrument panel than I am used to. I tried to source some decals for the instruments themselves but couldn't find any that were suitable. The HB sheet has a decal suitable for the HB panel, but each instrument is way too big for the Eduard ones.

Maybe I should have made the seatbelts out of Tamiya tape or something!

[Enzo the Magnificent]

My first change of heart. I sometimes get these in the middle of a build. I'll change my mind about markings, colour scheme - even the mark sometimes!

I was intending to build this with wings spread. But then I saw the Mechanic's excellent Wildcat. So now I've decided to build one wing folded, just to see how the folding mechanism looks on the finished model. I don’t know if the flaps can drop while the wings are folded, but this is a whiff, so I reckon that they can!

The fuselage and wing centre section joined together. The trailing edge parts of the wing recesses on the Eduard fuselage were filled with milliput once again. It makes for quite a hefty model. Hope the undercarriage is up to the job. The gaps have also been filled and the engine mounting spigot has been sawn off to allow the HB engine to fit.

The model has been given a quick coat of Halfords car primer. The panel lines on the Hobby Boss parts are very fine and the primer has filled them in. That's not a problem though as the first coat of primer is only an aid for me cleaning up the joint lines and filler etc. When I'm happy with the finish all the primer will come off, thanks to some Fairy Power Spray.

This is the model from underneath. There is a hefty joint line where the HB centre section joins the Eduard fuselage which will need some attention. Notice also the hinge panel on the wing. I simply could not get this to fit flush, so I will need to fill and rescribe. The joint line on the wing uppersurface was no problem whatsoever, unlike many kits that have a folded wing option.

So now I need to do some sanding and then some rescribing of panel lines.

From this point on, the project should be a straightforward kit build. Unless I bodge something up, of course!

[Daniel]

I have never been brave enough to do a wings folded aircraft, but when you see a good one, they look very good, so best of luck!

Dan

[Enzo the Magnificent]

It's been a while since I did anything meaningful on this build, but that's pretty much situation normal for me. I tend to put a model together and get it to the point where it is ready for primer quite quickly. Then I spend absolutely ages cleaning up joints and rescribing panel lines. Anyway, this is now pretty much ready for paint.

While I am cleaning up joints etc, I spray on auto primer from a rattle can. That can fill up panel lines (which sometimes is desirable). When I've finished the sanding and rescribing, I then strip off all the primer using Fairy Power Spray. This is what I've done to the Hellcat, but something weird has happened. The Power Spray has discoloured the plastic as you can see in the photo.

At first I thought it must have been the plastic that Hobby Boss use, but that's not so because it has affected the Eduard plastic as well. This has never happened before. Any ideas about what's going on?

I'm not worried though. It hasn't damaged the plastic, just discoloured it. A thin coat of primer should solve the problem.

[Enzo the Magnificent]

The main components primed and ready for paint. I have two glorious weeks off from work so I'm hoping that I can use the time to complete a couple of projects that have been dragging on a bit.

The rudder was cut from the fuselage of the Hobby Boss kit. Originally I just glued the halves together and then stuck it on the model. I found that the HB rudder was nearly a millimetre wider than the Eduard fin, so I ended up slicing the rudder apart, removing the locating pin that provides some strength and then sanding the mating faces so that the rudder is a lot thinner.

This build will definitely be an F6F-1. The Hellcat was originally designed with a Wright R-2600 Cyclone engine, but it was replaced with a Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp in the first production version, the F6F-3. The Hobby Boss cowling has a very un-Hellcatlike shape, as you can see in the photo below where it is shown next to an Eduard cowling. The Hellcat cowling had a pronounced downward curve on the upper surface. The HB cowling looks almost as though it is upside down, with an upward curve on the lower surface. Calling it an F6F-1 solves the problem with the inaccurate shape. I'll see if I can find a spinner to put on the prop.

[Enzo the Magnificent]

Today has been a bit of a learning experience. I've had bad experiences painting white or yellow bands on top of camouflage. The paint is usually so thin that it takes lots of coats to build up a decent colour. I could use dozens of mist coats, but after three or four I find myself getting very impatient and putting on a thicker coat, invariably ending up with an unsightly ridge of paint against the masking tape.

This time round I decided to spray the white first and mask it off. This worked well until I sprayed the first coat of yellow. The yellow is actually Lifecolor UA134 Zinc Chromate Yellow. It is more opaque than any other yellow I've seen, so my intention is to use it as an undercoat and spray the final true yellow colour when I have a consistent base coat.

As you can see from the photo, although the Zinc Chromate is a reasonable undercoat, it is still quite translucent. I should really have sprayed the whole wing uppersurface in white. I know there's a big bare grey primer patch on the tip of the seperate wing. I had to hold on to it somewhere! After taking the photo I applied a few more coats and it looks a lot better, so I'll be spraying pure yellow tomorrow.

The white band is masked. The Tamiya masking tape is pretty much the same colour as the Zinc Chromate paint!

I shall be using Lifecolor LC74 Gloss Natural Metal to represent the aluminum dope colour of the rest of the airframe. That's even more translucent than yellow, so I think I'll mask the yellow wings and white fuselage and nose bands then undercoat the silver bits with gloss black.

[Max Headroom]

Enzo you have my deep admiration - stunning work so far.

Erm.......what's with the Marmite - some sort of filler?

Trevor

[Enzo the Magnificent]

Erm.......what's with the Marmite - some sort of filler?

Actually, it's a masking fluid. It helps with representing paints that have faded. Paint the correct colour and let it dry. Then get some green scotchbrite pan scourer, scrunch it up and pull bits out so it gets very scruffy. Then dip the scotchbrite in Marmite and dab it on a piece of paper to get the surplus off. Dab the Marmited scotchbrite on the model so that random blobs of Marmite stick.

After that, spray a slightly lightened coat of the base colour over the top. When it has dried, wash off the Marmite. Then get some micromesh and polish the panels so everything blends in nicely. You can repeat the process a couple of times until it provdes the looks you want.

I've found it also works well with a weathering wash such as Tamiya Smoke or a very thin coat of a dust or mud colour. I've also used it to represent glossy paintwork that is just beginning to fade. Apply a satin varnish then do the Marmite thing and spray a flat coat over the top.

Plus, it's very useful if you get peckish while modelling...

[Max Headroom]

Plus, it's very useful if you get peckish while modelling...

What? Marmite is edible?

Seriously though that is another household tool for the modelling box!

Trevor

[Enzo the Magnificent]

Seriously though that is another household tool for the modelling box!

I can't claim any credit for the technique. It has been discussed on Britmodeller a few times.

Another interesting technique which has been discussed here is the hairspray technique. I haven't quite got my head around that one yet.

[Enzo the Magnificent]

Today, I sprayed a true yellow on the wings - Xtracrylix XA1011 RAF Trainer Yellow. Then I removed the masking in the white chevrons. I'm quite pleased with the result even though there is still a bit of a ridge noticeable in the second photo. That will disappear after polishing with micromesh.

On Thursday I shall be away for a few days visiting family. I doubt I will have time to undercoat the fuselage & wing undersurfaces and get a decent silver top finish tomorrow. I won't even try as I don't like leaving masking tape on painted areas for more than 36 hours.

I also sprayed the silver (over a black undercoat) on the cowling - after having masked off the white flight marking. The paint is Lifecolor LC74 Gloss Natural Metal. Oddly enough, the photo seems to show a bit of a texture that isn't there in real life. I think it's an artifact of the flash. Oh... and the cowling is blutacked (well... whitetacked, actually ) on which explains the bad fit and the gunk at the top.

Tomorrow I will work on various small components - engine, flaps, undercarriage etc. Plus other projects which I have been neglecting...

Incidentally... I've been considering the primer that this aircraft would have used. I don't really want to use zinc chromate, as that is to similar to the wing uppersurfaces. I know that some Wildcats used a grey primer which was similar in tone to Light Gull Grey, so I'm proposing to use this on the cowling interior, wheel wells and wingfold. I'll also use it on the flap uppersurface which is exposed when the flaps are deployed. This will provide an additional flap deployment visual cue to the pilot. Comments?

[RussTnailZ]

Great work looking very good

Russ

[spitfire]

I'm a bit late catching up with this one, but I likes it, alternative history is one of my favourite subjects.

Cheers

Den

[robw_uk]

not heard of marmite as a mask before!!! different.... must say thats a great build... like the masking for he wings. Looking forward to seeing the end result