I started this one simply because I had a lot of Model Master "interior green" mixed up in my air brush.

I was painting the fuselage and twin .030 caliber plastic parts tree for my Accurate Miniatures SBD-3, which is also in our "Midway Group Build".

I simply didn't want to waste the paint. Ironically I looked over at my kit stash pile and the first one my eyes landed on were this old Monogram TBD.

So I took this as a sign... I really don't know if I can get this one done in time for the June anniversary but I will try.

It's the Mattel Company release, kit number 7575-0100.

I picked this kit up at a swap meet a long time ago...( for 5$ if memory serves me correctly... since the box looked horrible and the stabilizers had been built) .

It's the original release of this kit dated from 1974 ! It gives a short historical summary on the side of the box. The instructions are awesome (but have yellowed considerably), since they give you color call outs and describe the parts... I wish that current kit companies would start doing this again... It even has the original release decals, which I am sure will disintegrate upon contact with water.

The box is very dingy and stained. The kit parts were not sealed in plastic bags and were loose inside the box. It appears to be complete, and even had the original diorama instructions, and Monogram sales flyer that promoted over various kits from the company.

Here's the clear sprue.

Followed by the wings tree and cowling. The cowling was loose inside the box. Here is what they look like after spraying the interior green.

This pictures shows the flaps, and various cockpit parts after they too were sprayed green...

This photo shows the fuselage halves and upper inner wing portions. Here again the fuselage is now interior green.

This picture shows the stabilizer halves. They had been glued together by someone else prior to my purchase of the kit. The parts will need just a little sanding on the leading edges.

I haven't decided on what paint scheme to build this one as. I don't want to build a plane that anyone else is doing in the Midway Group Build. So I will do some research and come up with a solution.

One thing I really like about this kit is the low parts count. Plus it's an original release and doesn't appear to have hardly any flash at all.

I built one of these as a kid, so it will be a trip down memory lane...

Please stay tuned.

I found out the hard way that I had a huge gap present on the bottom of the fuselage just ahead of the bomb bay doors. The fuselage halves fit very well together after I removed the locating pins and sanded both halves flat. What I didn't take into consideration was just how the cockpit was going to affect this fit...

I found the culprit after close scrutiny.

The area inside the fuselage that is molded to allow a maintenance inspection door open, and reveal the molded in details, was sticking out too far. I'm pointing to this location with a toothpick here in this photo.

I could not adjust the cockpit forward and aft since there are several locating pins present on the lower part of the cockpit floor. If the cockpit is not in the exact location, it will affect the fit of the top cover that glues on above the assembly...

So I spread the lower fuselage halves apart and performed some minor surgery...

I cut off the offending piece of plastic on the edge of the floor. Then I test fit everything. After several tries, I was happy with the fit. Here is this picture I'm pointing at the area with my Bare Metal Foil scribing tool.

The next step was to apply some glue, and clamp in position as it dried...

Here you can see the gap is non existent.

The gap should look fine now. This is how it looked after I removed the clamp. The gap is still partially present behind the engine in the firewall area. The engine and cowling should cover this spot. I'm sure that I will have some work to do here once the bomb bay doors have been glued in place. It looks like the front rounded contour is off just a little...

The area that caused all of this problem was located directly behind this spot. The Port side opening that shows off some of the molded on details.

Besides my usual internet searching, I have been using these three books for references:

1. "Naval Fighters Number 71" Douglas TBD Devastator by Steve Ginter. This is a great book, chocked full of information and a lot of photos...

2. "Scale Aviation Modeler Magazine". Volume 11, Issue 9
   This book just so happens to have a build article on the old Monogram TBD. There are some good photos too showing the sequence. Years ago our local hobby store carried these books. Sadly the LHS moved and I no longer get the magazines. I was lucky to have this one.

3. "TBD Devastator In Action" by Squadron signal
   Another fine reference. This book covers the Devastator from prototype to withdrawal from combat after Midway. It has some great pictures as well.

There you have it for today's work...

Maybe I can get a little done on the Dauntless or the Avenger.

As usual, comments are welcomed.

Take care.

Thanks Bernard for the information about the SAMI magazines. I really enjoyed reading them. I'll have to go check out the two places you mentioned to see if they carry them down here.

I saw the Norden bomb sight pictures in the Ginter book. It also showed one of the bombing windows opened ! It was very interesting to see how the technology worked back then when it was a front line aircraft. Neat stuff.

Tonight I made more progress on the Devastator.

Something was bothering me about the cylinder between the middle and rear seats that held some sort of compressed air. Then it hit me. It was probably a fire extinguisher.

I went to another website that has an amazing scratch built 1/16 scale TBD that was built by a WW2 US Navy aircraft veteran.

and there it was... He had modeled his plane with a brass colored cylinder. It looked just like an antique fire extinguisher. Not everyone knows this, but back then the fire extinguishers were not painted red as they are today. Most of them (not all) were polished brass or copper color.

As a retired former Fire Fighter Officer this is something I know a little about.

I found this picture of an antique aircraft extinguisher.

So I decided to give the gold colored "Bare Metal Foil" a try. Here's the foil as I was applying it over the extinguisher.

And how it looked after the excess was trimmed off.

Following this step I installed the rear gunner's ring mount, instrument panel and top plug for the fuselage.

A word of caution about the instrument panel :

If you follow the instructions as I did initially, they would have you install the pilot's control stick in step one.

DONT DO IT !

If you do then you can not install the instrument panel later. I had to remove this part in order to glue in panel in place.

It's very easy to glue the control stick back in AFTER the instrument panel is in position.

This picture shows the fire extinguisher and the middle plus the rear seats.

This last picture shows the top fuselage plug installed.

It's starting to look more like a TBD. Maybe tomorrow I will start cleaning up the fuselage seams.

I'm calling it a night.

Enjoy and as usual comments are encouraged.

You're welcome Chuck. If I run across any more problems I'll be sure to post them here along with some pictures and what I did to correct it. I'm hoping that this build goes smoothly though.

I've been tossing around the idea of building this one as a "Yellow Wings" plane.

I am seriously thinking about researching these bureau numbers that are depicted on these decal sheets to see if any of them participated at Midway. If they did, then I may opt to build the plane as it was earlier in life, and include what happened to the plane during the Battle of Midway.

The other deciding factor will be how well the joint seams turn out. If they are good enough for an aluminum finish, then that, combined with Midway service will be the deciding factors.

Meanwhile, here are the more recent kit decals that came in several of my TBD kits. (I have 5 of them, including this one).

This is a photo of the kit decals for the 2003 release that offered the book written by Bert Kinsey on torpedo and dive bombers. Unfortunately this book was not present when I purchased the kit used from EBay.

In this photo below is the kit decals for the 1999 release that was called the "Monogram Classics". This version came with a cool reproduction patch like the Monogram kits did way back when... I bought this kit new at a local hobby shop.

The next picture shows a set of "Yellow Wings" decals, 48-006 and includes decals for two planes. If another set of National insignia were included, there would have been enough to build two planes.

and the actual decal sheet.

The last option I have, is this set of "Yellow Wing" decals, 48-002. This set has all of the markings needed to build any of the section leader aircraft from VT-3 Saratoga or VT-6 Enterprise. This set doesn't include National insignia. Too bad... it would have been a nice addition.

and the actual decal sheet

Now I need to go do a little research to see what bureau numbers were present at Midway from these decals. Then I need to verify that the interiors on these planes, (if they were present at Midway) had interior green inside the fuselage.

Some of the earlier Devastators were delivered with aluminum lacquer as the overall interior colors. If so, I can't build it as my plane already has the interior green finish inside the fuselage. I probably should have decided prior to painting... but I can always fall back to a Blue Gray over Gray scheme if this doesn't work.

So I have some research to do... and hopefully the fuselage and wing seams will come out nice enough for a metallic finish.

Please stay tuned. Comments are encouraged.

I really like the old Monogram kits too Rob. I've been looking at the work on the interior of your B-17. It looks really good !
I remember the Red Baron car model as a kid. It was really cool with the German helmet and Iron Cross wheels ! I've often thought about building a real life version as a custom car... Plans to build it were available as a T- bucket. I would have to use a Big Block Chrysler 440 engine in mine though.

The Lil coffin was cool too.

Last night I glued some parts on the TBD.

I started out by veering from the instructions some. After studying this for a little while I decided that it would be better to glue the bomb window in place against the lower cockpit rather than to glue it down to the lower portion of the wing. So I used white glue and secured it against the bottom of the cockpit. There are two tabs located almost directly under the rudder pedals. This is what I used as an anchor point. It looks fine from above when looked at through the cockpit floor area. With the bomb bay doors closed, it will not be that visible anyhow.

Here's the Devastator after the wing center section was glued in position. I decided to glue the upper and lower wing halves together first. This way I could ensure that all of the corrugated panel lines were in alignment. If I didn't do this first, it would have been possible for the lines not to meet as they should.

However by gluing these parts together first, it gave me a little bit of problems with the fit elsewhere:

The wing to fuselage fillet joints are pretty nice and tight.

The lower section just aft of the flaps had a small gap. I'll have to use a little plastic to fill this spot in. If you look closely you can also see a small sink mark area just behind the flaps on each side. These sink marks are part of the upper wing halves.

In this area just behind the torpedo well opening, there was some "MMI" and copyright lettering present. I scraped this lettering off with a razor blade. You can see the results in this picture too if you look close enough. This area is right in the center of the picture.

The bomb bay doors were glued closed. There are a few gaps in this area that will need some attention too. I tried to close the gaps as tight as possible, but still managed to get a few...

There was also a fairly large sink mark in the plastic on both upper center wing halves... This in inboard and includes part of the walk way area.

So I will have some fill work to do. Hopefully it turns out nice enough for an aluminum finish.

I was on a roll and didn't want to stop.

So I applied some green putty to the sink marks in the plastic at the wing joints on the upper wing surfaces. These were very close to the wing walk areas.

I used an old single edged razor blade to smooth out the putty while it was still wet.

Then I gave the spot under the wing next to the flaps the same treatment...

While this was drying, I decided to glue the outer wing halves together.

Next I sanded down the green putty after it had dried. Once this was done, I re-scribed the panel lines that were lost due to the sanding process.

Finally I gave all of the seams another coat of sand able light gray primer.

This is how the bomb bay doors look now: I'm not really happy with the front rounded outline. I'm going to redo this section and make it better. The rear gap on one of the doors looks bad too...

Followed by the rear underside of the fuselage at the wing joint:

The plastic sink mark on the Port side came out pretty decent...

as did the rear upper fuselage seam...

Finally, here's how the sink mark looks now on the Starboard side.

That's all for today. I'm calling it a night.

Take care.

As I worked on my Dauntless some, it gave the TBD some time for the primer paint to dry somewhat.

A few years ago, when I painted my "Yellow Wings" F4F Wildcat, I used Model Master "Metalizer" paint on the fuselage. I made the mistake of painting the aluminum color first. The next step was to paint on a fuselage stripe that was red on this particular build. I had to mask this area off, and tape was applied over the aluminum color.

Later, when I removed the taped off areas that were covering the fuselage, it pulled some of the aluminum paint with it. In other areas where the aluminum paint remained intact, it left some pretty nasty tape marks.

All of the paint had to be stripped off... This time I'm going a different route:
I'll spray the aluminum "metalizer" last.

So I started masking off the tail area ...

I used Scotch "invisible" clear tape to mask around the curved sections surrounding the stabilizers and fin. Once I positioned the tape, I cut off the excess with a sharp razor blade.

After the small detail taping was done, I used wide Painters tape to mask off larger areas where overspray might land:

In preparation for some Model Master "True Blue" FS 15109, which was the color assigned to the US aircraft carrier Enterprise during this time.

Once everything was safely masked off, I started spraying the blue onto the tail of the Devastator. It kind of blended in some with the blue tape...

Once the spraying was done, I cleaned my air brush for the night. This gave the newly sprayed blue some time to skin over.

So the next step was done carefully so as not to damage any of the fresh paint. I started removing the tape...

Starboard side:

Port side:

and underside:

Here's how the Devastator looks tonight...

I'm calling it a day and will let the paint dry overnight.

It's starting to look more like "6-T-6".

Take care.