Review: Magic Factory F4U-1 & F4U-1A Corsair, 1/48. 'A New Line of Plastic Corsairs on the Horizon'

April 13, 2024 · in Aviation, Reviews · 1/48 Corsair F4U Magic Factory · 13 ≡ · 0.8K

I recently got round to finishing these pair of Corsairs from Magic Factory's new tooled set, this set is a dual-combo build of an F4U-1A and an F4U-2 Nightfighter but with minimal effort the -2 can be reverted to a -1 which is what I've done here.

My build thread will go over the build if you're interested, but in general these were very nice builds and in particular the fuselage construction should be noted for its wonderful lack of seamlines created. The kit goes together very similarly to a shrunken down Tamiya 1/32 Corsair, and does fix one of the biggest issues with the Tamiya 1/48 kit which is the wing fold design. While the kit comes with one folded and one unfolded wing, you can build two unfolded models with extremely minor and easy modifications. Either way in the unfolded or folded finish the wing is stronger and more accurate than the Tamiya kit.

The only real issues I encountered in the kit were the ailerons being designed in a way that has a very large seam line on the underside. The flap arrangement is also rather awkward, with the unfolded wing requiring flaps down and the folded with flaps up. In the end I modified these to allow two flaps up models, which is nothing new since the Tamiya kit requires modifications to make flaps up though unfortunately with the MF kit more cutting and sanding is required to do this.

Being that this kit is meant to depict an F4U-2, the canopy included has the small bubble for a mirror in it rather than the completely flat top which may limit what aftermarket schemes you can do. The kit also only comes with the night fighter exhaust which will have to be changed if doing a -1. Also, in general, there is a lack of extra antennas which whilst this may not be an issue building the kit as intended it can be rather unfortunate if going for aftermarket schemes as the antennas used on the Corsairs varied greatly, some antennas used here are from the Tamiya kit.

All in all though the added cockpit detail is greatly appreciated over the Tam, the engine whilst hidden behind that big cowling also looks nice. Gun bays can be presented as open should you desire, and while I've heard a bit of complaints over the rivet detail (which I'd say is more like 1/3rds the overall amount of rivets) which can be quite sparse, I'd always take it over a kit with no rivets as it serves as a nice guideline for fading when you paint the model. Most critically the model succeeded in the primary job of a model, an enjoyable build with an accurate dimensioned end result.

I think it's a very worthy successor to the Tamiya kit, and I look forward to future releases. According to social media we should be getting an entire line of the Corsairs eventually (so finally a good 1/48 F4U-4 on the horizon?!) and a single boxing of the kit, though unclear on what variant it will be, may release before the end of the year.

The F4U-2 turned into F4U-1 was painted up as an aircraft flown by ace Kenneth Walsh, whom would go on to be the highest scoring Corsair ace of the war with a total of 21 kills.

Meanwhile, the F4U-1A was painted up in scheme that should be familiar to anyone who has built a Tamiya F4U-1A as its the box art subject for both the 1/32 and 1/48 kits. This aircraft, 'Ole 122', is the only aircraft to receive a Presidential Citation after completing 100 missions, for over 400 flying hours and covering 80,000 miles all without a single mechanical failure or incident, eventually going on to complete 178 flights in it's life before returning to the States to promote warbond sales. Decals used here were from HGW, though not many were used as the stars on both Corsairs were painted on.