I’m trying to rearrange my (tiny) collection and I had an idea for a display, but I need some help from you guys.
I have an ikea deltof shelf display cabinet and you can fit 2-3 (really crowded with 3) 1/48 birds pershelf. What I was thinking of doing was, organizing each shelf so I had two adversaries on each shelf, like an american bird and it’s most common adversary on the same shelf.
I have a very small collection, so I might have to purchase more axis kits (darn [;)] [(-D] ) to make this work.
But here’s what I have (in 1/48):
F4U-1D off the U.S.S. Bunker Hill
P-47D Razorback - Wild Betty/Fearless Dick
P-51D - Petie 2nd
P-61 - Cooper’s Snooper
and I’m in the middle of an FW190A6 stationed in france in '43
And a bonus bird - F8F-1 Bearcat assigned to VNAF-1.
So what enemy bird would these planes most likey have seen in action? I’m thinking the corsair may have seen some kamikazes or other zero variant and the 51 maybe against a 109 or a 190. But I’m usually wrong about this type of stuff, so I’m looking to you guys to point me in the right direction.
I understand that Grumman’s F8F Bearcat never made it into combat during World War Two.
They were aboard Aircraft Carriers and on their way to be deployed prior to the signing of the armstic with Japan, however it was all over but the shouting. Too late for the mighty Bearcats.
Well, here’s what I think (for whatever THAT is worth… [:-^] )
The Bunker Hill saw action in almost every single major campaign from mid 43 till it was hit twice by kamakazi’s off Okinawa in '45. You could put it’s F4U-1 with just about any Japanese plane and be 99.9% sure of being correct!
Wild Betty/Fearless Dick was flown by Lt R. Kik. He had 1 “unconfirmed” victory in it over a FW-190. Your 190 you are working on would go well with this one.
Although it has a BUNCH of victories on the side, John C. Meyer only scored 2 victories in Petie 2nd. Most of his victories were in Lambie, Lambie II, and Petie. I can’t find specifically what they were, but if you were to do a Bf-109 you couldn’t go wrong as that was the plane he faced most often.
Lt GC Cooper flew with the 548th Night Fighter Squadron on Iwo Jima and Ie Shima. The two most common “night fighters” of the Japanese were the KI-45 Nick and the J1N1 Gekko. Late in the war though, the Japanese were using just about everything they had left, day OR night, so you could build almost anything and be OK with it.
Ditto what trexx said about the Bearcat. No WWII action, but the VNAF used it as a fighter/bomber during the 1st Indochina war. I don’t know if any aerial battles were fought or not.
Looks like I have quite a few japanese birds ahead of me. I’ve wanted to build a 109 for a while and I’ll have to start taking a look to see what was around for indochina war.
I’ve done a bit more “research” on the 1st Indochina War. Remember, this was fought between the French, a “puppet” government in S. Vietnam (your VNAF plane), and the Viet Minh… precursors to the Viet Cong that we know from the 2nd (Vietnam) war. It seems the French and VNAF had all the planes!!! As far as I can find out, the Viet Minh didn’t have a single airplane!! Sorry I can’t be of more help…