Parker and I have gotten into watching the old episodes of Baa Baa Black Sheep, 
and when he found an incomplete 1/72 Corsair kit in Grayson's room (a very nice 2009 Hobby Boss I later realized) 
he finished it while sitting on the couch watching the show. The problem was that the kit was missing the engine, cowling, and propellor. So when I was in Dallas a couple of weeks ago I picked up the cheapest Corsair kit I found, which was an old (1979) Matchbox kit, intending to use it for spares.
Incidentally, I've never built a Corsair. I remember getting the BBBS kit shown above, but not finishing it, and I have no idea what happened to it. So it's nice working on it, but compared to the 1/32 aircraft I had in 1976 or 1977, this thing is tiny!
Unfortunately, the Matchbox kit didn't have a separate cowling, and it was a postwar model with a four bladed propellor. So we decided to build the Matchbox as an overall Sea Blue (late war) F4U with the Bunker Hill markings that came with the Hobby Boss kit (since as the screen shot shows, one of the Black Sheep Corsairs had the Bunker Hill arrow on its wing). 
I also used the Hobby Boss split canopy so I could show the plane with the canopy pushed back.
The markings are for the F4U-1D flown by Lt. (jg) William L. Gerner of VF-84, flying from the U.S.S. Bunker Hill (CV-17) on February 25, 1945, when he scored three kills. Coincidentally, Gerner was from Dallas, Texas man and studied at Texas A&M before entering the Navy. He was aboard the Bunker Hill with VB-17 for eight months, and came to VF-84 via VB-84. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flight as Section Leader of a group of planes in VF-8 over Tokyo, on 25 February 1945. So it's fitting that this model from Dallas was finished as the aircraft of a Dallas native.
The Bunker Hill's Corsairs 
sometimes have yellow cowlings and sometimes don't, but Parker opted to include one. (I didn't include the white markings on the fuselage – they are tape that covers the seams in the fuselage to keep aviation fuel or oil from leaking out and onto the pilot's windscreen).
This kit is sort of a warm up, as I have gotten a state of the art Tamiya F4U-1 with markings for Pappy Boyington's aircraft (at least the one that was photographed as his, even though records indicate he never flew that specific aircraft in combat) and will trying to model it with a weathered three-color camouflage circa late 1943. 
Weathering something I have not attempted with my 1/72 aircraft yet.
0
0
Average Rating