I'm out of Battle of Britain mode (for now) and I'm heading back to the Pacific. I figured I'd share the Hellcat I've been plugging away at for the last week or so. I'm building the Eduard F6F-5 Hellcat in the markings of the first Hellcat ace, Hamilton McWhorter III. He flew "White 9" with VF-12 off the USS Randolph in 1945. McWorther was the first Hellcat ace and would finish the war with twelve enemy aircraft destroyed. McWhorter helped form VF-12 and took part in the first raid of Tokyo in February of 1945, where he downed a Zero (possibly in White 9). Here's my homage to this brave hero.
McWhorter's "White 9"...
As I said, I'll be using the Eduard kit. I have built it before, when it first came out, but unfortunately I don't recall much about it. That's not a good sign yeah?
I started with the cockpit. I have to admit I'm not particularly impressed. It's pretty weak. Fortunately the Profipack comes with color PE which I suppose saves it. I put it to good use. Perhaps I'm just spoiled by the Tamiya cockpits...lol. I went with my mix of interior green, XF-4 Yellow Green, XF-5-Green, and a touch of XF-49 Khaki. I did order a few AK Real Colors US Cockpit colors which I look forward to trying, but they have not arrived yet.
The engine it quite weak too (Ahhhh......t's all coming back now!). I wasn't impressed in the least. I used the included PE wires, but they were so thin you could barely see them. I tried painting them to add bulk. I did add an ignition ring which was missing. Certainly not Eduard's best work. Interestingly there is an advertisment in the instructions for a resin Brassin replacement R-2800. Now I see why.
I suppose it looks decent once inside the cowl..
The airframe goes together very well. No issues. I have to give Eduard points for surface detail, it's outstanding. I don't think they missed a rivet. The wings tuck nicely into the fuselage so there are no wing root issues. Be careful with the dihedral though.
I replaced the exhausts with brass tube. The kits were too small to drill out (or I didn't have the patience to try to hold them and drill out).
Now I have to figure out how to make ANA 623 Dark Sea Blue look like a real plane and not a toy. I would imagine dark blue will be just as tough as black to do convincingly. I started by preshading the panel lines and paint all areas that would be white. I used Maktar masks for the stars and bars
I then taped off the distinctive USS Randolph tail markings. I used the kit decals as reference.
For this project I procured the AK real colors Dark Sea Blue. I'm not expert but the color look ok to me. I left a hint of the panel lines showing through. It's not as dark as I thought it would be. Or AK got it wrong....lol. I'll live with it...
It's definitely weird having a plane all one color. Fortunately this one will get a white drop tank.
Now I had to make it look somewhat real. I added some XF-2 White and faded the panels a bit. I then went back with straight DSB and went for a mottled effect. I stopped about here.
After I was reasonably happy with it, I spent about an hour trying to make the Hellcat's prominent exhaust staining look "right". I started with diluted XF-19 Sky Grey to fade the paint then dirtied it up with diluted XF-57 Buff. The key word here is diluted. Next I went in with heavily diluted XF-69 NATO Black to made the actual exhaust staining. I slowly built these up and stopped here with the risk of overdoing it. I'm fairly happy with it.
That all for now. Time for some clear coat.