Korean War...1/48 Douglas AD-4NA Skyraider, VF-194, US Navy

13/2022

After the French Skyraider, my dad decided to build another one, this time an AD-4NA during the Korean War.
He used the Italeri boxing of the old ESCI kit which was first released in 1979. Most Korean War naval schemes are rather boring, but I had a Cutting Edge sheet with a more colourful scheme in the stash. Like it happened several times before with Cutting Edge decals, they disintegrated in the water. So my dad secured them with Microscale Liquid Decal Film, which luckily worked out. Because of that, the decal carrier film looks a bit thicker. Painted the model with an older selfmixed navy blue. The kit is a modular one for AD-4 (N, NA), AD-6. There are fuselage side inserts for either the dive brakes or the doors. My dad had to fill some lines and engrave new ones in that area, in the end he dicided to remove all the raised panel lies and rescribe the model. Kept the ventral dive brake. It´s slightly raised and to sand it away completely and get a smooth even surface, hardly impossible. When the model stands you don´t see it anyway. The prop plades are molded the wong way around, to say the rear side faces forward. So my dad cut them off und glued them on again in the correct position. The pitot tube under the right wing was taken from a Tamiya Skyraider kit, the Esci one has only a tube for the fin.
The two napalm canisters are leftovers from an unfinished Hobby Boss F-80 kit. They have no engravings for the filler caps, so my dad used some decals and added fuses with plastic rods. The 2000lb bomb is from the sparesbox, added some scratchbuilt strap-on and mount. Real center racks came later with the AD-5. Little fin mast was done with plastic rod, antenna wire with EZ Line.

Build thread here
https://imodeler.com/groups/korea-the-forgotten-war/forum/topic/1-48-douglas-ad-4n-skyraider-vf-54-us-navy/

Model shows a VF-194 Skyraider onboard the USS Boxer in 1953.

25 additional images. Click to enlarge.