Eduard 1/72 F6F-5 Hellcat "Hirohito Special"

Modeling Subjects Aircraft
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Hi all,

Sharing some progress on my current build, depicting the 10,000th Hellcat built, delivered to VBF-87 aboard USS Ticonderoga in May, 1945. Grumman employees nicknamed it the “Hirohito Special,” although that name was not applied to the aircraft. Here she is aboard Ticonderoga, pictured with Lt. Commander Charles Ingalls, Grumman tech rep Ralph Clark, VBF-87 CO, Commander Porter Maxwell, and CAG-87, Commander Everett Phadres.

The plan is to depict the airplane as delivered, so relatively clean, and sans drop tanks or rockets.

I’m using Eduard’s Royal Navy Dual Combo boxing of their supurb little 1/72 Hellcat kit. If you don’t go for all the PE and other bells and whistles, this is a simple kit with great detail and nearly perfect fit - stress free and fun to build. I, of course, suffer from too much AMS to go that route, so my build is getting Master brass gun barrels, Quickboost tail surfaces, the PE from the kit, and some scratchbuilt enchancements. Decals for this aircraft are on Iliad’s “Milestone Aircraft” sheet, #72010.

The Master brass .50 barrels were the first thing to be added. They fit the wing insert perfectly.

Next came the engine. Basic painting, plus the PE from the kit, was all that was required. I like to wire up the cylinder banks seperately before joining any of the engine parts together.

The finished engine, after a dark gray oil wash. The data plate and PW logo are PE from the kit. The engine is totally out of the box. One of the better engines I’ve managed to build, I think.

In the cockpit, I went for high contrast, Spanish style. Main color is Gunze H-58. Since the kit PE only includes Sutton harnesses, I sourced a set of US-style belts from Eduard’s “fabric” line. The printing was horrible, and the material is odd, a bit like a dry-rotted rubber band, but they were easy to drape in the seat and look OK installed, as long as you’re not using an Optivisor…

Completed cockpit sidewalls, dressed up with some Mike Grant placard decals. You can see that I tried adding chips and scratches with a paintbrush, and went a little too heavy-handed. Again, without magnification it looks OK, but I’ll be more subtle next time.

Left side console dressed up with a combination of kit PE and more MG placards.

Main instrument panel, something like 15 pieces of PE. Instument bezels were filled with Future to simulate glass, although they didn’t catch the light well in this photo. The kit’s triangular plastic lump of a gunsight was shaved off and later replaced with clear acetate.

Test fit into the fuselage. Everything fit perfectly.

Lastly, before the windscreen was attached, the replacement gunsight glass! Looks much better than a plastic lump.

Next installment will be exterior airframe details and getting ready to paint. Any and all comments or criticism are welcome.

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Superb! Very impressive work and detailing.

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Excellent, Kevin. I really like the photo as well. Great piece of history.

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Very nice work, indeed!

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Wow…[:D[

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Looking good so far

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Nice start. Impressive detail in such a small kit.

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Thank you! Eduard really gets the credit on this one - it’s a fantastic kit, even better than their 1/48 Hellcats. It’s much easier to do your best work when you aren’t fighting the kit!

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I was happy with my little Hellcat, but yours is incredible so far. Following for sure.

Just noticed your home. My niece lives in Ypsilanti with her husband and kids.

Chris

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Thanks Chris! Best thing about Ypsi is ModelCave, our amazing local hobby shop. I spend way to much time (and money) in there…

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Her’s an update, showing work on the overall airframe. I decided to pose the tail surfaces, so I employed a Quickboost set that includes the relevant parts. After c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y separating the rudder from the left fuselage half with a JLC razor saw, the fuselage halves were mated and the Quickboost horizontal stabs attached with CA.

Normally, if you want to keep the tail of a tailwheel airplane from flying away on you, youd secure the stick all the way to the rear, elevators up. Well, I’d forgotten to apply this correction in the cockpit, so since my Hellcat has the stick at neutral, I decided to just depict the elevators drooping slightly under their own weight. Besides, the Navy chains these things to the deck, so nothing to worry about, right?

I made a template out of an index card to set the offset angle for the elevators; i think its roughly 10 degrees, but I don’t recall exactly. I ended up using the same offset angle for the rudder, as well. All the quickboost parts fit perfectly.

Despite Eduard’s gorgeous surface detail, they neglected to depict the belly formation lights, so I marked and scribed the locations. MV lenses will be added at the end of the build. I removed the molded navigation lights as well, simply because its easier to clean up seams that way, they’ll also be replaced later. I drilled out the ends of the exhaust pipes at this point, but no photo… that’s pretty straightforward, anyway.

Eduard also molded the wingtip light solidly, as most manufactures do, but the Hellcat has colored bulbs beneath a clear cover, so I removed the molded lights and scratchbuilt replacements. This is a detail I love adding; it adds a ton of life to a model. I did the same for the landing light in the left wing leading edge as well, although I neglected to take a photo of it.

After that, the wings went on. The fit overall on this model is exceptional, and very little seam cleanup was required. You can see a few areas where I checked my work using a Sharpie marker. There are only a couple of tiny spots of Mr. Dissolved Putty on the entire model.

Next comes the fun part - paint!

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I started paint work on the Hellcat by priming it with Mr. Surfacer 1500 Black from the rattle can. Pricey stuff, but worth it. It self levels beautifully.

After that, I applied a preshade of sorts with Tamiya XF-66 light gray and XF-9 hull red in a few places. I used more random squiggles than anything. Not trying to define panel lines (I don’t care for the patchwork quilt look that this gives you), just trying to provide some tonal variety in the base coat.

I was excited to try some MRP paint on this build, since I’ve heard good things about it, but when I started to spray their Gloss Sea Blue, it was just waaaaayy too green. Like almost a teal color. Pretty, but very wrong. Too bad, because the stuff airbrushes so well - easily the best spraying paint I’ve ever tried.

I ended up using a homebrew mix of about 50/50 Tamiya XF-17 Sea Blue and XF-8 Flat Blue. I didn’t do any fading on this model since Gloss Sea Blue - especially the variety used by Grumman - didn’t fade much. Exposure would cause it to lose its gloss somewhat, but it was an extremely sturdy paint, and I’m depicting an almost new aircraft.

Next up, aftermarket decals from Iliad for the 10,000th Hellcat scheme. They went on very easily, fit perfectly, and played nice with Microscale products, for the most part…

…except for this little guy. One too many rounds of MicroSol trying to get it to conform around the aileron hinge, and it called it quits. My fault, really. I ended up sanding it down and just repainting the triangle.

The Eduard Hellcats have gorgeous surface detail, so I highlighted it subtly using Ammo of Mig medium gray PLW. I specifically wanted to avoid the dusty look that I gave to my land-based F4U build from a couple of years ago. The medium gray looks nice over the GSB - from some angles it nearly disappears, like you would expect looking at a real aircraft.

Next up is some weathering! As always - all comments and criticisms are welcome.

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Looks great!

Great kits, those are…got a couple of em under my belt!

You still flying out of Willow? I started working on my single/commercial add on (have multi/comm/inst.), but got totally sidetracked with a big remodel project…gotta make the money! Plan was to get the single commercial (just to open up the job market a bit)…also long overdue for an IPC. Then I was gonna go back down to Willow to get current for multi. May get some time in this summer…otherwise, I gotta put it all off again until next winter.

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Hey, good to hear from you! Yes, I’m still at YIP, driving the Lear. Job market is wide open these days… there are tons of opportunities available in either YIP or PTK if you’re interested in making the leap.

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Highly interested, I am!

I do need to get the IPC and current with multi, at the very least. I’m assuming the best route is to get those knocked out before trying to sell myself!

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Yep, you’ll need those, and as much current flying time as you can manage. Also, do the paperwork to get your FCC restricted radio operator license, you need that for any international flying (which most operators in Michigan do a lot of). Easy to do and only costs about $65 IIRC. Usually shows up in about two to three weeks.

What’s your total time look like? Lets me know where to go looking. I can PM you with any info I dig up.

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Noted!

Ideally, I’d prefer to work out of YIP (20 minute drive)…I do dig them big ole Convairs, runnin out of PTK too, that’s about 45-an hour drive though. I’m pushing 450hrs right now, will probably be close to 500 by the time I get through the IPC and multi/current.

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Cool. Man, I’d happily bring you on board at our place, but mins are still a firm 1,000. Insurance just won’t allow us to go lower. I’ll check around though, EVERYONE is hiring.

And if you’re interested, there is a small group of modelers meeting monthly now in Ypsi. Nothing formal, not forming a new IPMS chapter or anything. Just hang out, talk shop, show and tell. Invitation only kinda deal, let me know if you’d like to join in sometime.

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You’re doing a beautiful job. I just built a 1/48 version and I’m impressed with your ability to bring out all the detail on this 1/72 version. Looking forward to the final weathered and finished result!

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Appreciated!

A meet up sounds interesting…but being work season, and trying to get in some stick time…models aren’t on the “short list” for things to do right now. I do slow down work, quite a bit though toward the end of summer, then get real busy again in early fall. I’ll keep it in mind though, and touch base with ya on it if time allows.