1/48 Eduard F6F-5 Hellcat VF-12 "Hamilton McWhorter III" (FINISHED)

Looks like your keeping busy. I built there 72nd F6F last year, wounderful kit. Nice start on yours.

Nice subject matter with a fantastic start!

Toshi

Looking great so far!

I'm in for a quick update.  I've been at sort of a stand still with this turkey.  The kit was found to be missing one of the rear "opera" windows, so now McCampbell's plane, which had them, is off the table.  I bought this kit used off ebay and several of the clear pieces were off the sprue, so who knows where it went.  You'll have that I suppose. Fortunately the kit comes with fuselage halves that are void these windows for a late dash 5.  My options were now dwindled.  I was surfing ebay and came across Hamilton McWhorter's #9 which seems to be void the window.  He's the first Hellcat ace and one of my favorite pilots......sold!  

It was a piece of cake to assemble and I had no issues.  The wings fit into a depression in the fuselage which alleviates wing root gaps. I hit the seams with primer and found that I did fairly well the first time.  It's my understanding this kit is the only one to get the overlapping panel effect on the fuselage right. It does take some care in sanding though.    

I turned my attention to the R-2800. It seems a bit small in scale to my eye.  It's also fairly basic too.  I used copper wire for the ignition.  To see how I do this check out my tutorial here:

 http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/2/t/149327.aspx

Now that I know which subject I'm going with, I should get to paint soon..

Look at the current issue of Flight Journal.  Great article in there.  Makes me want to build a Hellcat!

You are off to a great start!  Too bad about the rear window being missing.  You could have used clear styrene to make a replacement.  Your statement about McCampbell being an "Ace in a day" twice is correct but not in the same day.  He achieved his first "Ace in a day" on 19 Jun 1944 by shooting down 5 Judys on his first sortie and 2 Zekes on his 2nd sortie for a total of 7 for the day.  On 25 Oct 19 44 he shot down 5 Zekes, 2 Hamps, and 2 Oscars for a total of 9 for his 2nd "Ace in a day" event.  He was awarded the Medal of Honor for these events and his his leadership of AG-15. 

Always loved the Hellcat!  I remember when Hasegawa came out with the 1/32 kit.  I thought of it as the "Thunderbolt" of the Navy!  Big fighter!

I admire the way you regrouped and moved on regarding your missing window, Joe.

Melgyver

Too bad about the rear window being missing.  You could have used clear styrene to make a replacement.  Your statement about McCampbell being an "Ace in a day" twice is correct but not in the same day.  He achieved his first "Ace in a day" on 19 Jun 1944 by shooting down 5 Judys on his first sortie and 2 Zekes on his 2nd sortie for a total of 7 for the day.  On 25 Oct 19 44 he shot down 5 Zekes, 2 Hamps, and 2 Oscars for a total of 9 for his 2nd "Ace in a day" event.  He was awarded the Medal of Honor for these events and his his leadership of AG-15. 

 

The window?  I thought about it, but I didn't feel like it.  Reference McCambell's kills, I worded that wrong....my bad.  IIRC the first time he did it was during the Marianas Turkey Shoot. Vraciu had a good day there too I believe.   Thanks for catching my error.   

Greg

I admire the way you regrouped and moved on regarding your missing window, Joe.

 

 

Thanks greg.  

Don Stauffer

Look at the current issue of Flight Journal.  Great article in there.  Makes me want to build a Hellcat!

 

Do it!......check this out first.  Very inspirational!

Ahhh my favorite show...makes me want to unshelve my Accurate Miniatures F-6 and get to work on her.

Nice work. I've been tinkering with the Eduard Mk.I in Fleet Air Arm service, but haven't really gotten serious about it yet. Looks like yours is coming along very well.

-BD-

Thanks guys.  I finally got around to paint on this turkey.  After a panel line shading, I sprayed the tail and aelerons XF-2 Flat White with a touch of XF-19 Sky Grey added. I then taped off the pattern for VF-12 Hellcats off Carrier USS Randolph thusly.  We don't need no stinkin' decals...at least for this part....lol. 

The nice part (or bad part depending how you look at it) is that late war Hellcats were all blue, specifically ANA 623.  I mixed mine with half XF-17 Sea Blue and XF-8 Flat Blue and sprayed everything this color.  Now I needed to make it interesting, which is hard for dark colors.  I added a touch of white and faded the upper surfaces a touch.  Then I added some streaking, all while trying not to overdo it.  I also did some postshading here and there.

I wanted to get the exhaust staining right.  I studied some pics and came up with this.  I added some XF-57 Buff to the blue and faded the paint in the exhaust area.  Some diluted XF-64 Red Brown dirtied it up.  This looked about right to me.

I should get to decaling soon.  

Yeah, that's beautiful work, Joe! That exhaust staining looks perfect!

Thanks Mike and Johnny.  

Well, I'm done with this one.  It's the late war mount of Hamilton McWhorter III, the first Hellcat ace.  This was his last Hellcat while aboard the USS Randolph while attached to VF-12.  In this plane, McWhorter scored his 12th and final victory on May 15th 1945.

This was the Eduard Profipack and built mostly out of the box.  It even came with resin wheels which were well done.  The kit is good but not perfect.  My additions were an Ultracast prop and Quickboost fifties, which are both lousy out of the box.  The decals were Superscale and beautiful.  I made my own engine wire harness in lieu of the kit supplied PE.  It just looks better to me.  Not unlike black, an all dark blue subject can be challenging (landing gears and wheels too......I guess they got spray gun happy in those waning months).  Fortunately these were rather new so I kept the weathering to some minor streaking and fading. I intially tried a grey Flory wash but it looked stupid, so I went back with black.  I went with a Testor's dullcoat then slowly brought it back to semi gloss in some areas. I figured the ANA 623 would dull quickly in the Pacific sun. I'm pleased with the results.

Thanks for looking...

I gotta say that this is what I strive for,really nice touches,everything blending together.A-1.

That's fantastic Joe. I was wondering where you'd been hiding. =] Great job with those blues. Looks tough and fun. You make it look effortless. Always fun watching you paint.

I hope to get around to Vraciu's Hellcat some time this summer. I'm anxious to tackle that tri-scheme again.

You did a fantastic job on this kit.  Everything looks superb!

Toshi

Beautiful!  Love the stand and figure!

As usual it looks beautiful, Joe. Awesome paint work. 

BK

Crazy good build!

Inspiring to view masterfully finished kits/dioramas such as this.

Another beauty

I don't understand everything you did to break up the dark blue, but the results are fantastic. Who woulda thunk to make the exhaust staining lighter than the dark blue. Brilliant.

Looks superb. McWhorter was a total badass. Great choice for a Hellcat.

Another beautiful build Joe.

I have another noob question that may seem obvious to most, but how in the heck did you mask that exhaust? The feathering effect is very subtle but adds such an element of realism that makes builds like yours stand out from the likes of builds like mine.  

Thanks again for sharing!

Chip