Background:
The Douglas C-47 Skytrain is a military transport aircraft developed from the civilian Douglas DC-3 airliner. It was used extensively by the Allies during World War II and remained in front line service with various military operators through the 1950's. The C-47 differed from the civilian DC-3 in numerous modifications, including being fitted with a cargo door and a strengthened floor.
During World War II, the armed forces of many countries used the C-47 and modified DC-3's for the transport of troops, cargo, and wounded. The U.S. Naval designation was R4D. More than 10,000 aircraft were produced in Long Beach and Santa Monica, California and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
After World War II, thousands of C-47's were sold on the surplus market and converted to civilian passenger or cargo use. The C-47 has had a very long career with many military and civilian operators around the world. Some are actually still in regular service to this day. There have been many variants over the years for both specialized military roles and upgrades for civilian operators.
*Sourced from Wikipedia, some of it verbatim
DISCLAIMER: I am not an expert on any aircraft and certainly not the C-47. I just build models. My points of view will be from a builders aspect. I will not delve into accuracy or shape fidelity in scale because honestly, I couldn't tell you anyway. If something in this review is wrong I will happily stand corrected.
The Kit:
The kit comes in a rather large top opening box. This is great because I always use these types of boxes as the parts trays on my builds. The bottom portion is corrugated and is very sturdy which I really like. I hate flimsy boxes that fall apart or cave in after being handled or having other kits stacked on top of them. The box art is of the D-Day para-drop featuring numerous C-47's in full D-Day stripes dropping their paratroops and is quite nice.
Upon opening the box my first impression was WOW! This is a bigger airplane than I was expecting. I've seen C-47's in museums and the like but I was still surprised by how big the 1/48th scale model actually is. All of the sprues are molded in an olive colored plastic with one clear sprue and all are individually wrapped which is excellent. Here is the sprue with the main fuselage halves on it with a standard X-acto knife for scale reference.
The instructions come in a standard A5 size booklet that are a typical Revell affair with step by step construction sequences and generic paint color call outs.
There are 14 construction steps for the airplane itself. One page is devoted to painting the paratroopers, pilots, and mechanic. Did I mention the figures? More on that later. The last two pages are devoted to the painting and markings instructions for the two schemes provided in the kit.
The instructions seem pretty good over all. I like Revell's approach when it comes to instructions. Maybe it is just the nostalgia of my youth, but it is usually very clear where things go and what gets painted what color. Two things jump out at me though from the instructions. Firstly, there are 3 different intakes provided for the top of the engine nacelles. The instructions specify them as early, mid, and late. Yet they do not tell you which to do for whichever scheme you are doing with the kit. Both sets of marking instructions have the late intakes shown on them so as far as I can tell that is what I will be using since I am doing an out of the box scheme. Secondly, just with my preliminary looking up pictures of the C-47 on the internet I suspect that some of the color call outs for the interior are a little generic and bogus. They basically want you to paint everything on the inside of the aircraft interior green except for the instrument panels and such which are flat black. Looking at pictures of the the real aircraft interior there is much variation. For instance, the floor in the cargo bay was bare aluminum with black anti skid strips. This is not mentioned in the instructions. Over all though, I would say that if you followed the painting instructions to the letter you wouldn't come out with a bad result.
Let's move on the the decals:
The decal sheet is HUGE! But..... most of it is taken up by the D-Day stripes provided for both the over and under wing and the fuselage. I'll be painting these as I'm sure most will want to. This is because it's just really hard to get a decal that big to lay down like it should and conform to compound curves. It's definitely doable as I've done it before, I just don't want to take the chance. Plus painting these markings always looks better, at least to me. It is a nice option though for those that don't want to fuss with the painting and masking.
The rest of the sheet is taken up by the national markings, stencils(of which a fair bit are provided), and the specifics of each plane. The coolest of these individual markings to me is the black panel on the port side of the aircraft depicting how many different drops, glider tugs, and cargo hauls it has undertaken. There are two different aircraft you can model from this kit. One is "Buzz Buggy" from the 81st Troop Carrier Squadron. This one is Olive Drab and Dark Green on the top side with Neutral Gray on the bottom. It is apparently piloted by a Looney Tunes fan as it has Bugs Bunny nose art on both sides of the nose. The second scheme is "Drag 'Em Oot," apparently piloted by a Scottish football hooligan. This is from the 87th Troop Carrier Squadron. This one is Olive Drab over Neutral Gray.
Lastly, some decals are provided for some, but not all of the instrument panels. They look pretty good and if they lay down over the kit parts well, which I think they will, should look convincing. The rest of the instruments they advise you to just paint with white and silver details. I really don't think much of this detail is going to show up after the plane gets put together though.
My experience with Revell decals as of late is that they are pretty good. The sheet looks nice and I don't expect any real problems with the decals I plan to use as long as I have a nice glossy undercoat.
Next up we'll take a look at the plastic in the kit.
