North American YFJ-2 Fury in 1/48
HISTORY
The FJ-2 Fury was North American's swept-winged follow-on to their straight-winged FJ-1.
As the Korean war progressed into 1951, the Navy recognized the limitations of their straight-wing fighters (F9F Panthers and F2H Banshees) against the swept-wing, MiG-15. They also saw the success of the Fury's sibling, the Air Forces' F-86. As such, they went to North American and called for, what was initially, a Navy Sabre.
The XFJ-2 first flew in December, 1951 with legendary test pilot, Bob Hoover, at the controls. In August, 1952, the Dash-2 began carrier trials but its poor low speed handling and a weak nose gear made it unsuitable. The Navy decided to send all Dash-2's to the land-based Marines and wait for the Dash-3, which would correct these faults. The FJ-2 was retired from service in 1957.
THE KIT
When I first thought about added an FJ-2 to complement my FJ-1, I started looking for a Kitty Hawk kit. The reformed company is re-releasing their line, but the FJ's hadn't reached my market yet and I couldn't find one on eBay at a price I was willing to pay. So, I dug into my stash and came up with a 1979 ESCI kit.
The ESCI FJ-2/3 is at best, an “arms-length” model. It is neither an F-86 nor an FJ-2 and is definitely not an FJ-3. ESCI went to the trouble to make some changes to their F-86E kit by adding the Fury style landing gear, wheel wells and the FJ-2 style canopy rail, but didn't enlarge the tail nor the nose intake, which would have created a slight deeper forward fuselage. I recently saw the same molds re-boxed under the Italeri name.
The kit comes in dark blue plastic and with all ESCI kits of that time, it has reasonable surface detail but a simple cockpit and wheel wells.
CONSTRUCTION
Knowing that the kit “is what it is”, I decided I'd build it out-of-box in navy-blue to complement my FJ-1. I quickly found that the decals had aged so badly that they were flaking off the paper in my hands. I found that Caracal had a decal sheet for the FJ-2 that included the YFJ-2 in navy-blue. The YFJ was somewhere between a blue F-86 and a production FJ-2, making the ESCI kit only slightly “less wrong”.
An excellent reference for navy aircraft is Tommy Thompson's Tailhook Topics blog. He has covered, in great detail, many Navy aircraft including the FJ series. He notes that North American was allowed to deliver the FJ-2 (and Dash-3) with a non-standard cockpit color – a shade of teil green. I took some British cockpit green and darkened it with a bit of blue. In hind-sight, this wasn't enough but it is definitely not the standard American cockpit green, zinc-green or gray.
I made one other substitution to the cockpit. I had a resin seat for my Hobby Boss FJ-4 so I took the HB seat, which had much better detail over the simplified ESCI seat. I added a metal lap belt and shoulder harnesses from Tamiya tape.
Before I closed up the fuselage, I added weight to the nose. For many years, I've use non-hardening, modeling clay that I impregnate with lead shot or small fish weights. The clay allows me to push it into small areas where it molds to the interior contour and stays put without added any glue. I have never had a problem with it coming loose inside a model. The clay that I am using now is over twenty years old and is still as soft and pliable as when I bought it.
After closing the fuselage, I added the wings and tail. The fit was quite good. I use Mr. Surface 500 to fill some gaps around the nose piece and the belly wing joints. Next came an over-all coat of Mr. Surface 1000 and a light, wet sanding with a 3000-grit sanding sponge.
PAINTING
Thompson's blog noted that not only were the inner gear doors red, but so were the entire wheel wells. I painted the wells and inner doors with insignia red, then sealed them up in prep for final painting. The decal instructions showed that the YFJ-2 wing slats, drop tank tips, leading edges of the tail and nose intake were silver. I painted these with Tamiya silver lacquer and masked them off.
From my previous build of the FJ-1, I had lightened the entire bottle of Tamiya Sea Blue with some white for a scale color effect. I sprayed my custom Sea-blue, applied a good coat of Future and was ready for decals. The Caracal markings for the YFJ-2 went down with no problems at all.
After another sealer coat of Future, followed by a coat of Tamiya clear, semi-gloss, I unmasked everything and added the landing gear. To give the plane a slight nose-high stance, I added a spacer in the nose well to mount the gear to. This created a “longer” nose gear and a higher nose.
After everything was dry, I took some photos and realized I had a problem that I hadn't noticed before. I had glued the canopy closed and saw that the seat barely showed over the cockpit ledge. I don't know if the cockpit is too deep or the canopy is too tall. The canopy was easy to remove, but I had supper-glued the seat to the cockpit floor and it wasn't going to come out without breaking something. I decided that with the canopy open, it didn't look too bad.
CONCLUSION
And the YFJ-2 Fury is done and now sits on the shelf next to my FJ-1.
For all of the kit's faults, it really looks good in the white NATC markings over dark sea blue. Placed next to the FJ-1, the contrast in shape and form is so great that the aircraft really should have been the FJ-1 and the F2J-1, but I'm sure that the Navy's decision not to re-designate the Dash-2 as a new airplane was more political and funding issues rather than design.
I probably won't do an FJ-3 since it is nearly externally identical to the Dash-2, but I do have an FJ-4 that I will someday add to this set.
REFERENCES
Tailhook Topics (an internet blog) by Tommy H. Thompson, https://tailspintopics.blogspot.com/
A very nice looking machine
Thanks, George
Really well done, Chuck (@charleshorner). It might not match all of the details of the actual plane, but it really looks the part. The blue paint scheme is very cool. I have been dragging this kit around for a lot of years, but have never gotten around to building it.
Thanks, George.
I too carried this kit around for years. I bought it new in 1979.
Nice work, Chuck! I built one of those as a place holder until something better came along. 15 years later, it’s still on my shelves because it looks too good. Nice catch on the cockpit color. I didn’t know that when I built mine and painted it gray.
Thanks, John.
I regularly check on Thompson's blog and when I started the FJ2 i remembers some postings on the cockpit color. I found this photo and tried (but failed) to correctly match the color.
1 attached image. Click to enlarge.
Well done, Chuck
Thanks, Gary
That is really spectacular Chuck. (And I reserve that description to a very few postings, mostly because it is eleven letters and takes so long to type.) I think the finish is, well, spectacular. The decals went down nicely as well.
Thanks, very much, Russell.
The Judges at the New Hampshire GranitCon partial agreed with you. As I took a 2nd place in my category.
1 attached image. Click to enlarge.
These early jets just have an iconic beauty and simplicity to them! Your Fury captures that well.
Thanks, Greg.
I really like building these early jets. I don't see enough built examples either at the contests or the various web sites.
That's a really nice build, Chuck @charleshorner
A very nice picture where they stand together.
Thanks, John.
I figured I need at least one "group" shot to show just how different they are.
Excellent Fury, Chuck! Fantastic result from the Esci kit!
Thanks, Spiros.
That is a great looking Fury, Chuck.
Thanks, Felix