I've been building aircraft of Air Group 15, the most successful Naval Air Group ever, as I am writing a book on them. This is the Monogram SB2C-4 modified to a mid-production SB2C-3, using the Eduard photo-etch flaps and dive brakes (if you think you have ever found an overwhelming photoetch project before, try these - heh, heh, heh, he said connivingly).
The SB2C-3 is a hard one to get. The early production version has the glassed-in center section behind the pilot's canopy, which changes in the mid-production to the later windowless center section. Both have the non-perforated flaps (this set was for an SB2C-1 to correct the Accurate Miniatures cock-up of the kit when they released it). The late production SB2C-3 has the peforated dive flaps and looks like a -4 other than not having the prop spinner.
The model is of an airplane flown by LT John D. Bridgers of VB-15, who first qualified as a Naval Aviator (three landings on board) on the Enterprise, returning from the Doolittle Raid, flew at Midway from Yorktown and survived her sinking, flew from Saratoga and Guadalcanal during the Solomons campaign. In VB-15 he participated in the sinking of the Musashi and got the fatal hit on Zuikaku at Cape Engano (leading the entire first strike, 400 aircraft from 8 carriers), rising from engineering officer when he first reported aboard to XO by the end of the 1944 deployment. He left behind a really wonderful memoir written two years before his death in 2007, and is thus a "major character" in my work.
Bridgers said that the rumors were true that the SB2C had three more hydraulic fittings than a B-17, and three fewer engines. When they got the SB2C-3s at the end of July 1944 to replace their SB2C-1Cs, he said the extra 200 horses finally made takeoffs "less adventurous." Jim Duffy of VF-15 told me that when he watched the early SB2Cs take off of the Hornet, "you couldn't have gotten me to fly one of those things with a direct order."
The Monogram/Pro-Modeler kit is one of the best Monogram ever did, and certainly still the definitive "Beast."
3 attached images. Click to enlarge.
