After finishing my Corsair I’m still in a South Pacific mood. That Eduard Hellcat dash 5 behind me on the shelf has been beckoning me for quite some time. That’s the nice thing about these Profipack kits, they come with everything to satisfy the most persnickety of a modeler (ok…usually). I got it off ebay not too long ago. This one even has resin tires in there, which is rare with these. May I also add that this is some of the best box art I’ve ever seen. A Jack going down in flames…I love it…
I started with the pit. This cetainly isn’t Eduard’s best work. It’s fairly spartan. Fortunately the PE provided goes a long way and the opening is small so not too much will be seen in there once closed up. I painted it Gunze Interior Green. Here’s my attempt at it.
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:
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!
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.
Awesome job so far, I picked up the Hobby Boss 1/48 F6F-3 that I wanted to use in a diorama of a pic I saw of one in a crater on an island but the wing fold detail is too gorgeous not to have the wings folded, so I’ll get another -3. Can’t wait to see the finished result
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.
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.
