I will be starting the Pacific Build soon and have chosen to do George Gay’s Devastator…he was the only survivor of VT-8 during their attack run at the Japanese carriers at Midway. I have not found all too much on his plane though- so any help would be appreciated.
I dug through all my reference material and all I could find is a painting on the back cover of the “TBD in Action” book published by Squadron. If you want, I could scan this picture and e-mail it to you.
This is the best photo of his plane that I could find on the net:
George Gay aircraft
George Gay interview
You might find some info in this interview with George Gay.
The only other info I have is that he flew the aircraft with the code 8-T 14.
hope this helps.
Do a google search for Yellow Wings, because I forget their web page. But email the guy who runs it. He’s really a nice guy. I spoke with him last week, and he told me he makes only decals for US Navy planes from the immediate pre-war era when they wore, tada!, yellow wings with colorful noses, wing chevrons and fuselage stripes. But I think he has a set, or is planning on, on the Lost Squadron of which Gay was the sole survivor. Yes, I know the planes were blue-gray by then, but not for very long before they were lost.
Tom
Mike, here are some sites that may be of some use to you:
http://www.stenbergaa.com/stenberg/index.html?item601.html
http://home.centurytel.net/midway/Carrier_Squadrons/Torpedo_Eight/in_color.html
http://www.johngreavesart.com/sawhillmoore.html
http://www.ussyorktown.com/yorktown/georgegay.htm
and a new book, TBD DEVASTATOR UNITS OF THE US NAVY.
Wow!! Thanks guys-- great stuff! bigfoot-- if it isn’t too much trouble, I would love a copy of the scan.
Tom-- I was looking through those decals today and they looked pretty good… I will probably contact him…although with Daniel and Ed’s great info (mainly the fuselage code), I will probably make my own decals as these planes didn’t have a lot of extraneous stuff on them like nose art and the like.
Think I might have a go at recreating the custom art on the torpedo warhead from some of those pictures too while I am at it [;)]
Jeeves, I sent the picture to your MSN address listed for your IM. If you need it sent to another address just let me know. It is almost 2MB in size.
Do you guys know who publishes the Devastator book, or the price? Sometimes it’s in the Osprey series and you know pretty much what to expect there: you get about what you pay for. Then, you get these extremely specialized, and beautifully researched, drawn, painted and printed books by small “boutique” publishers like Monogram Aviation Pulishing, and because such books are expensive to produce, and have such a small, specialized audience, by necessity they cost at least $65-$75 and up. The very few such books I’ve managed to replace from my disaster, like the one Monogram Painting Guide for the USAAC, I treasure. Before my fire, I had all four of their Navy painting guides, and the books were so beautiful, that for the whole five years or so I had them I would take them down at least once a month just to read and look at. And, of course, every time I built a Navy plane I had the last word in colors and markings right at my fingertips. I had their famous Luftwaffe Painting Guide as well, which, in its ring binder, cost $65 when I bought one of the very last ones printed in about 1987. I don’t know why it has never come back into print. With it’s wealth of appropriate color chips for each type and subtype in the Luftwaffe inventory, it was an invaluable reference. Sorry, I wandered off the topic big time, but I love reference books on our favorite subject, especially the really nicely done ones.
TOM
No sir-- that’s perfect!! Thank you very much!