Bought this "used" on eBay. When it arrived, I found the wing had been assembled and all the parts cut off the sprues and put in plastic bags. Fortunately everything was there, and the wing assembly was OK. That left just the fuselage to take care of, which wasn't hard, other than to apply some Mr. Surfacer over that mold "glitch" in the forward fuselage, sand it smooth and rescribe the area.
I'm going to use the last of my Victory Productions Decals sheet to do the F4U-5N flown off USS Princeton during the Chosin emergency by my friend Admiral Don Shelton. Admiral Shelton (He keeps telling me "Call me Don," and I keep saying "Admiral, you can take the boy out of the Navy, but you can't take the Navy out of the boy. Sir.") is the last of The Originals who created 24/7 all-weather naval aviation - he's just celebrated birthday number 99 and the lights are still 250 watts above the eyebrows, as he puts it. After getting his wings after the war, his first CO in VC-3 was Chick Harmer, and the night fighter organization was run by Captain William Martin, who as CO of VT-10 aboard Enterprise at the time of the Truk Raid created night attack aviation by turning his squadron into a night attack unit. He was Division Leader for the VC-3 detachment on Princeton for the entire tour 1950-51, the longest combat tour of any carrier during the Korean War. His most notable achievement was landing dead-stick at night aboard the ship ("I wasn't wearing a poopy suit, so I couldn't bail out, and I couldn't glide 50 miles to the nearest shore field, so my options were limited."). I think I'll probably give this to him when the covid clears to the point it's safe for us to get together again.
Anyway, here it is, ready to paint.
3 attached images. Click to enlarge.
