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A Pair of Midway VB-6 Dauntlesses, 1/72 Hasegawa


72nders

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Hello all,

After almost 6 months of work, we finally finished our SBD-3 Dauntlesses. This was a group build with my dad, who built the aircraft flown by Lieutenant Commander Wade McClusky, I built the aircraft flown by Richard Halsey Best “B1”. We used the 1/72 Hasegawa kits that were re-boxed by Hobby 2000. We replaced the dive brakes with Eduard photo-etched and added detail to the cockpit using the Eduard set too.

My kit is pretty much out of the box; to see if it would add any value my dad did some other modifications to his kit: he replaced the kit canopy with a RobTaurus vac-form canopy, scratch-built oil coolers and machine guns, model master gun barrels, photo-etched bomb racks, Brassin bombs, scratch-built bombing view window, reskit modified resin wheels (smoothed out) and scratch-built window air flow deflectors. Both kits were painted with AK real colors acrylics (the underside colour was corrected). The decals are a mix of the ones from the Hobby 2000 reboxing, Aeromaster decals and some other spares.

We had a lot of fun building the dauntlesses (but it was quite complex), so we hope you enjoy looking at them.

Comments welcome!  

 

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Underside of McCluscky's aircraft.

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Underside of Best's aircraft.

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Last picture.

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Both are beautiful builds, a perfect slightly faded coloring on the upper side, the only aspect which in my opinion could have done a bit different is the underside

it's a bit too clean/monotone, but can be fixed with a decent wash.

 

 

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These are very neat clean accurate builds - bravo! I'm astounded that two different modellers come up with nearly identical twins, you would need close-up pictures to see the differences.

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Very nice they are too. By sheer coincidence I  happened to watch a documentary about the Midway battle this morning. The roles of McCluskey and Halsey Best were highlighted and it got me thinking about models of the SBD from the battle. 

Well you've answered my question for sure.

 

Great job.

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Hello to all,

Thank you very much for your kind words, they are very encouraging for my daughter (14 years old) that is learning much faster than I did at her age (I used to finish a kit on the same afternoon back then).

I have been modelling for more than 40 years but with little time to it until my recently early retirement in aviation. It is thanks to my daughter as well that I am leaving my internet grumpiness behind.

Our build was synchronized at every step, hence the similarity of finishing: Every time I worked on mine, at her side, I explained every step and afterwards she did what she thought was best on hers.

We try to keep weathering to a minimum after reading an interview with Best, where in his words: “they were the cleanest airplanes, I ever saw in the Navy”

I am very happy as well that my daughter is developing a great interest on WWII airplanes, which are starting to share her time with the STAR WARS buildings (you can see some of her builds on this website)

Yes, I am a very proud daddy…

Cheers

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Nice done! Just to ask: I built lots of carrier based a/c. Here I had to push me to answer the question:

How to display?

Parking position either wing fold or not. The Dauntles is easy.

And if parked: Gun stowage!

In many aspects, if you play around once with a deck diorama  it may open a new pleasure for you. Towing at fixation points also.

Looks also great for jets.

Next step hangar diorama. 

For the future!

 

If any question fot eing fold, I have many photos done!

 

Happy modelling 

 

 

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Both models look really good and appear bigger than their scale suggests. They're both finished to a very high standard and help portray that very important day in history. I've been researching the SBD for my build and I reckon you're spot on with the colours. You can always add more weathering if you think it needs it. I'm also really impressed that your daughter is able to work to this level, I wasn't anywhere that good at age 14. Awesome work oompa Loompas.

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  • 11 months later...

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