Looking super, my friend @eb801! All these "rabbit hole" details you research and implement, only make your buold even more amazing. Looking forward to your progress!

Eric Berg (@eb801)
Very nice work. You are moving right along with the Hellcat. My friends at American Aero have all kinds of neat stuff in the shop.

Besides restorations, they also do annual inspections on a lot of various aircraft from the war bird circuit, so you never know what will pop in there from time to time. They do excellent work and have earned the "Golden Wrench Award" at Oshkosh several times now when their restorations were judged.

They just keep getting better.

Believe it or not, they work on military vehicles too. Here they took a Cold War era T-55 and adapted it to look like a Tiger tank. When I took this picture they were fabricating brackets upon which they welded and bolted on the various armored panels to make it look like a Tiger tank. It was a decent copy when completed, and only the road wheel spacing a sprocket location is what gave away the true origins of this tank.

They have previously done a Hetzer, a T-34/85 and a few others too. The most recent one I can think of was the Staghound restoration.

One of the coolest things I have seen there from a model builder perspective, is they have an actual WW2 US ANA color chip book. They use it regularly and I have access to it if needed. Lately I have been going with the TLAR method instead of getting trapped into another can of worms on colors.

Paint Dept
While in the process of painting, I decided I would honor Jim by choosing one of the color profiles from his "In Action" book:

The only thing I'm missing is a decal of the cartoon image as shown in the above profile.

In order to replicate this F6F-3 one has to remove the lower cowl flaps as these were deleted beginning with the 1265th example. Otaki's kit is moulded based on the first 300 F6F-3's produced so some updating is required. Easy fix here by simply filling in the engraved flaps with CA cement and sanding smooth along with a bit of re-scribing.

Nice progress Eric.

I'm a little late to this thread, but I've really wanted to get a consensus on this. I've built the Otaki F6F and I loved ever minute of it. Great, simple kit that was easy and fun to build. But...I just can't help thinking that the inner wings (the portion of the wings that is inboard of the wingfold hinge line) of the Otaki F6F have a slight anhedral or taper that just makes the wings look "off". I can clearly see this on my build, and I see it in pics of other completed builds, but I have never heard or read any comments on the topic. I have not had the opportunity to compare the Otaki wings to Hasegawa or Eduard to see if there are obvious differences. What do you guys think, did Otaki get the wing wrong on this kit or is it just my imagination?

Eric Berg (@eb801)
Hey Eric,
This is an excellent choice for markings !

Years ago when I worked at the fire department, I actually met a local man named Arthur Payne Whiteway. He flew Hellcat's with VF-16 on the Lexington. I had a good talk with him about his service. This is a picture from his later obituary. His obituary also mentions how he was assigned a Hellcat #13.

He mentioned to me that he was actually "assigned" this very plane, #13 at least on paper. As such, he was responsible for making sure the plane was properly cleaned and maintained. However, when he flew missions, he (along with the rest of the pilots in his group), would fly whatever was available.

This is a really good picture showing this very same plane after "Wendy" Wendorf landed on the carrier after being wounded, grazed in the head by a Japanese Zero MG round that came through the window. "Payne" as his friends called him, told me the maintenance crews were able to fix "his" Hellcat and it was flying a few days later following the landing mishap.

He also told me he was credited with two Japanese Zero's during November of 1943. This picture shows the pilots from this mission as they are holding up fingers representing the number of Japanese aircraft they were credited with that day.

He flew with Lt. Commander Paul Buie, and might be visible in this very cool color picture showing a few of the pilots from VF-16.

This picture was also taken around this same time. It also has some of the men from the previous photo in it.

I built a model of this same Hellcat using a Hasegawa kit some time ago. I used decals from the Hobby Boss kit as they were included with the model.

1/48 Hasegawa F6F-3 Hellcat, The Great Mariana’s “Turkey Shoot” Lt. Arthur “Payne” Whiteway, VF-16 “Fighting Airedales” USS Lexington

Here is a link in case you are interested in checking it out. I will be checking back for updates on this one. It hit very close to home... Thank you.

Back the the Paint Dept.

After a bit of delay correcting the two lower cowl flaps by eliminating them and rescribing the lower cowl, I was ready to move forward with paint.

Here we go with all three colors applied. Non-Specular Insignia White on the bottom, Non-Specular Intermediate Blue on the sides, and Non-Specular Sea Blue on top and sides. All paints are Tamiya self mixes.

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Some more touch up and a clear gloss coat and I will be ready for decaling. In this case I will be raiding my decal dungeon for the bits and pieces I need to put these markings together. I just found out that Hobby Boss has all the no. 13 markings on their decal sheet included in their F-6F-3 Early Hellcat kit. Ain't that the way it always goes!

She's coming along nicely, Eric