When I joined this group, I looked through my Squadron publications and discovered I had a large number of the books by Jim Sullivan. I was particularly interested in two books that are not on a specific airplane, but rather on a theme. These two books are "Bent and Battered Wings: USN/USMC Damaged Aircraft 1943 - 1953" and "Golden Wings: USN/USMC Aircraft of World War II". These books are prime material for a build since they cover a large variety of aircraft.

As I was leafing through these books, a Vought Kingfisher on p. 52 of "Golden Wings" caught my eye. Not only is it painted in the Atlantic paint scheme, which is one of my favorites, it is also a land-plane version without a float. I have the aged Monogram 1/48 model of the Kingfisher, and it allows you to build either a float version or a wheeled version. I have read a number of reviews on this kit that all point out that the float is noticeably smaller than it should be. Building the wheeled version neatly bypasses this problem. I did a quick search through my usual online shops, as well as Ebay, and failed to find any of the cool add-ons, like canopy masks or photoetch. I want to do a little extra detailing on this model, so it should be a good test of my scratchbuilding. Now that I am done with my CB-25J, I should be warmed up for this build. See you all soon.

Thanks, Anna-Elizabeth (@tankgrrl). I just finished a Monogram B-25, so I am looking forward to jumping into another old Monogram kit. There is still some life left in the old kits.

George R Blair Jr (@gblair)
This is an excellent choice ! I have a few pictures I found a while ago of a collision between two Kingfishers in a nearby Naval Air Station that was called Banana River back then. Now it's a part of the Space Center complex. This same place is where the Martin PBM Mariner took off from on December 5th, 1945, in search of the missing 5 Avengers that eventually became world famous as "Flight 19".

Later the same day the Mariner disappeared too. However there was a flash / explosion observed in the skies offshore, and this very well could have been what happened to the Mariner.

Kingfishers are really cool, and your approach here will definitely solve some problems that have been stated about this kit. Personally, I would build it as is with the float, but they look really neat on wheels too.

Check this out. Here's a cool picture that caught my eye a while ago. These are "Yellow Wings" planes to boot.

You can definitely count me in as a follower here. Thanks for joining and participating in our ever growing group.

George R Blair Jr (@gblair)
I forgot to mention it, but the Kingfishers in the collision were painted in the Gray / White ASW scheme just like the one you picked out. This is a great look for any Navy plane.

Here are the photos I'm talking about. Someday I would like to build up one of them. I like to build models of planes from our local area during the War.

@lgardner - those "yellow wing" Kingfishers are such handsome airplanes, the photo is spectacular.

Thanks for the photos of the crash, Louis (@lgardner). There is some great detail in the photos. It is really hard to see the dark gray on these planes thanks to the peculiarities of the old black and white film.

Anna-Elizabeth (@tankgrrl): I just did my first all-NMF on the B-25 I just finished. I have been building models for about 60 years, and I managed to avoid building a NMF model till now. Now that I have tried it, I can tell you that it is just a matter of jumping in and getting some practice. I also watched a bunch of YouTube videos. :o) I am embarrassed that I avoided it for this long. Tom is a very generous man. After I commented some years ago that I still liked building the old Monogram kits, he sent me a Monogram 1/48 Typhoon IB.

You've got some Monogram treasures, my friend @tankgrrl! Looking forward to see them tackled by you!

This will be a great addition to your recent Mitchell, George @gblair
Looking forward to it.