Douglas SBD-5 Dauntless

Hello, fellow modelers.

This time I’m showing you my recently finished Douglas SBD-5 Dauntless from Hasegawa in 1/72 scale. Taking into account its age, it’s a well detailed kit, with fine recessed panel lines. It came with decals for two U.S. Navy versions: one from the VB-16 squadron carried by the “USS Lexington” aircraft carrier (portrayed on the box’s top), and one from the VC-40 squadron based at Bougainville in 1944. I chose to build the second version because it has the 4rd of the six different insignias that the aircrafts from the U.S.A. carried during the 2nd World War (shown below), and I wish to have in my collection at least one aircraft with each kind of insignia. The VB-16 version has the insignia with the red edge (the 5th kind) and I already have a P-39 Airacobra with this kind of insignia.

I began to build this kit many years ago. As the holes of the dive brakes were represented as very shallow circular depressions, I decided to drill all the wholes. In the long run, it wasn’t a good decision because once this process was started, it cannot be stopped and took a lot of time to be finished. Besides that, as I advanced in the process I found that some of the holes weren’t drilled exactly where they should be, and also that some of the holes drilled on the top surface of the dive brakes were not aligned with the corresponding holes on their bottom surface (maybe it’s due to a molding defect). At one point I couldn’t stand this and I put this model aside for several years until now, when I decided to drill the remaining holes and finish the model.

I have only three complaints of this kit. The first one is the depth of the “holes” of the dive brakes. The second is that the “white” of the decals wasn’t truly white (it’s a common feature of many Hasegawa kits). The third one is an assembly instructions’ mistake: in the 7th step it indicates to glue two supports for a dipole array antenna, one for the underside of each wing. Studying carefully an in-flight photograph of the full-size aircraft that I chose to build I realized that it didn’t had these antennas. Regrettably, I realized that after the model was completely painted and decaled with one of these supports already glued, so I had to cut the support, sand the place where it was glued, re-scribe one panel line and paint again the surrounding area. I also had to fill the hole for the other support, located below the underwing insignia. Doing that I slightly damaged the insignia, so I carefully cut the circle from one of the insignias left from the other version and glued it over the original decal in order to hind the damage.

One interesting fact of the version that I chose to build is that the b/w photograph of the real aircraft (included below) shows the rudder and part of the nose with a darker shade than that of the rest of the aircraft. A modeler that built this version and showed his model on the Aircraft Research Center’s website many years ago painted the rudder with Intermediate Blue and the cowling with this colour and with Non-Specular Sea Blue on the top. My interpretation is different: in the photograph there are places with no contrast between the cowling and the fuselage behind it, and there’s not a darker shade that suggest the use of Non-Specular Sea Blue on the top of the cowling. Therefore, I only painted the rudder with Intermediate Blue and left the remainder of the aircraft with its original paint scheme using US Navy Blue-Gray.

Well, except for the unevenness of the drilled dive brakes’ holes, I’m satisfied with the finished model, which I dedicate to my brother Douglas in his birthday.

Your comments are welcome.

With best regards,

Orlando Sucre Rosales

10 additional images. Click to enlarge.