1/32 Tamiya F4U-1a Corsair - Boyington 17740

[Stikpusher]

“Goodyearn” ?

I guess that’s one way to get around copyright laws...

But I’ll bet that military tires should not have white sidewall lettering.

[speedgraflex]

Diamond tread, I know! I just got off of work and that was on my phone. It’s an image taken from the assembly line.



I don’t have any classic smoothies on my phone. I also thought the logo was standing too proud of the sidewall but... this is Barracuda Roy’s work so I don’t want to be too critical. His Mustang P-51D cockpit was ace.

Most important, John, rest and heal! I feel badly that you are not feeling your best. Please take care of yourself.

[KennyX]

You’d probably see both, depending on when it was during the war. And Bruce, that photo is great- it puts it in perspective how big this aircraft really was, y’know?

[Handiabled]

The quality of this build is awesome! The notes on different areas I have taken are going to come in very useful (if/when) I get to one of these kits

[jkim]

Ah well... I didn't quite like how the wheels turned out anyway. You can't tell from the photos but there are multiple layers of colors in those tires. They are actually dark brown with lighter colors along the contact patch. Further staining was done with dry pastels and oils. But it doesn't come out in pics, even with the light box. I'd probably need to use a darker background (i.e. black) but I'm too lazy to swap out backgrounds on the light box.

The "N" is going to get scraped off and the white Goodyear is going to be sprayed over.

[speedgraflex]

Not to worry—your painting did not go unnoticed. Those tires looked great, John. I hunted around for a good color view for you, and found this. It’s definitely a great shot of the exact type of 32x8 tire used, on the hub. Notice also the red and blue plates on the hub. I almost wanna dare ya to go for broke and get those in there, but I imagine Tamiya maybe included those as decals. Did they?



I wanted to add hopefully this matters (and I think it does) we are dealing with a pilot whose attitude was to take the roughest, crankiest airframes almost as a point of pride and use their personality to his advantage, so I think you are doing an absolutely brilliant job of laying the foundation to create either a cleaned up for the cameras version or something much scruffier.

Edit—your wheel is this type! Apologies. No red and blue plates.





Magnesium alloy. I have seen examples painted blue.

[Stikpusher]

The factory specs were that the wheels and landing gear should be painted to match the surrounding exterior areas. On the Tri color schemes, that would be white. But there could be some overlap at the time that changeovers of schemes occurred and older parts waiting to be used up.

[speedgraflex]

Those photos are amazing! Thanks for the information, Carlos!!

[jkim]

Thanks for all of the info! Very helpful!

I've scraped off the offending "N" from the tires.


And then shot the sidewalls with another coat of brown/black, covering the white lettering.


The spoked wheels haven't been glued on yet... who knows if there is another round of unexpected changes to come.


I've started work on the complicated inner wing assembly. The oil coolers are first. These come with nice photoetched grills, front and back.



It's hard to figure out what will and what won't be seen.



It looks like the backsides of the coolers will be visible but I think this opening gets covered up at least partially.

[jkim]

In addition to the color callouts in the Tamiya instructions, another color reference for this build has been the article by Martin Waligorski hosted on IPMSStockholm.org. It's called Interior Colors of US Aircraft 1941-45.
http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/magazine/2 ... _part3.htm

Here's the section on the Corsair, in its entirety.

Vought F4U Corsair

Sorting out the interior colours of the Corsair is particularly tricky. For the F4U-1 Birdcage Corsairs, photos taken at the time show the cockpits being a very dark colour, most probably black. Analysis of some crashed examples of F4U-1s indicates black, while the factory Erection & Maintenance Instructions called for Dull Dark Green.

As mentioned before, early production Corsairs had their interior surfaces in areas other than the cockpit covered with Salmon primer. This colour mixture was used relatively long into Corsair production. It would seem that all F4U-1s and a number of early F4U-1As were finished this way.

Somewhere during the production of F4U-1A model Vought discontinued the use of Salmon primers and switched to Zinc Chromate Yellow with cockpits in Interior Green.

In the engine cowling area, Vought adhered to the practice of painting its inner surface the same colour as the underside, ANA 602 Sky Gray on early F4U-1s, ANA 601 Insignia White on F4U-1As.

The wheel wells of early model Corsairs deserve closer inspection. Like the cowlings, the main wheel wells, undercarriage legs and boths ides of well covers were painted in the underside camouflage colour, ANA 602 Non-specular Sky Gray. Wheel hubs were silver. However, the smaller forward area of the wheel to which the leg itself retracted was left in the factory primer finish, Salmon. Some aircraft had also Salmon inner surfaces of the small covers attached to the undercarriage legs.

The canvas covers in the wells were probably drab -coloured.

With the advent of the tri-colour camouflage on F4U-1A the same principle was applied with white replacing the Sky Gray with ANA 601 Non-specular Insignia White, and the However, the undercarriage legs remained grey throughout the production of this model, possibly due to the failure or indifference to notify a subcontractor about changed colour specifications. For the record, some photos of -1As seem to show silver undercarriage legs, but it could not be established to what extent such finish was applied. One theory is that Aluminium lacquer was applied on these assemblies during field depot overhauls.

In October 1944 the new factory instructions for the F4U production called for application of Interior Green on all internal surfaces including the cockpit. As an anti-glare measure, all cockpit panels above the lower edge of the instrument panel were to be painted matt black. Curiously, the new directive did not explicitly state what was to happen with the cowling's inner surface. Thus, subsequent machines showed either Zinc Chromate or Interior Green cowlings, until the last standardisation of colour post-war whereupon black was introduced in this area.

During that period, the wheel wells were also painted Interior Green. Undercarriage legs were initially still finished in light grey, but as existing stocks of parts were used up at the factory, the overall Glossy Sea Blue finish was carried over to the undercarriage legs and wheel hubs.

So I've been picking and choosing colors between these two "sources" just to let you guys know where I'm getting my color choices from.