Tamiya 1/48th Scale F4U-2, “BLACK GEORGE” VMF (N)- 532, South Pacific, 1944

This is the Tamiya F4U-1 Birdcage Corsair, built with the optional conversion parts to do an F4U-2 Night Fighter. It's the third 48th scale WWII Pacific Fighter i've finished, dating back around mid 2007. It's also the first model i painted with an Iwata Eclipse dual-action airbrush.

Not knowing exactly what the cockpit looked like, I built it straight from the box. I made some small external modifications to the kit but nothing spectacular. They included:

Replaced the Tamiya kit wheels with Ultracast resin F4U/F6F wheels, with the diamond tread pattern. Added brake lines from lead solder.

Drilled out holes in tail wheel truss and removed catapult holdback fitting and arresting hook. Replaced catapult fitting with lead solder.

Added LSO Line-Up light window and gun camera window on leading edges (Near wing folds).

Notched out and replaced wingtip lights with clear sprue, sanded to shape and polished.

Fabricated new pitot tube from hypodermic needle tubing.

Made fuel filler caps from evergreen rod and stretched sprue.

Added ID, Formation, and landing lights from MV Lenses. Added blue position light on spine from ELF. White light in tail cone is .015 white Evergreen rod.

Scratch-built 100 Lb Bomb racks, using Accurate Miniatures Vindicator bomb racks as reference.

Made antenna tensioner spring from copper wire chucked in a pin vise, wrapped around a # 80 drill bit.

Paints are Testor's Model Master enamels. I added quite a bit of white to the intermediate blue, and added intermediate blue to the non-spec sea blue to lighten it up somewhat. Decals came mainly from the Tamiya kit with a few from the spares box.

More Corsairs are on the Way!