The NAS Jacksonville F4U has an underwing MK-41 bomb rack installed on the Starboard side. If you look closely at this next picture, you can see it is barely visible. It also has a practice bomb dispenser mounted to the rack. This was routinely done on training missions. The practice canister allowed up to 6 different small practice bombs to be dropped. Each small practice "bomblet" (not to be confused with an omelet) had a shotgun shell inserted into it, and this is what registered the impact, recording the hit.
I'm not sure if one was installed under the other wing. It is possible one was there, but due to the angles these photos were taken, it is not easily distinguishable. If you look very close at the area under the Port side wing, next to the big number "4", it looks like a set of sway braces can be seen. So I decided to add a bomb rack to each side under the wings.
Taking a page from Marc Barris,
@marc
I decided to tempt the scratch building Gods and made some of my own... as the ones I had from other kits were either too big or too small (sort of like Army combat boots).
I had a few good pictures showing how these racks looked. These photos are in the magnificent book written by Dana Bell. I have been using this book a LOT and mentioned it earlier on in the journal.
Using the pictures as a guide to make a scale size approximation, I got busy. I cut out 8 bomb rack sides using 0.010 plastic card stock. Before I knew what happened, I had made several sets of bomb rack sides, and using a 0.028 Waldron hole punch set, I popped three holes into each one. Punching the holes took the longest... don't look too close as the holes are not perfect, but they are close enough for me...
The rest was easy peasy... I used some 0.040 round tube, and some 0.040 X 0.020 strip stock and made the rest.
These parts were glued together. I made 4 racks, enough for 2 Corsairs. I'll have an extra set for a future "birdcage" Corsair build.
Then it was time to make the bomb sway shackles. I used more 0.040 round tube and formed them on a round dowel to make a small curvature in the plastic.
These little parts were glued together and then once dry, they were assembled into the racks.
These things are not very big, being a little over 1/2 inch / 12.7 MM in length.
Once painted a stainless steel silver color, I let them dry. Here they are next to the picture in Dana's book.
There are 4 of them sitting on my machinist scale ruler.
Once dry, I installed them on the underside of each wing on the NAS Jacksonville F4U.
I also added some exhaust staining...
and installed the clear parts.
Now it's a matter of deciding whether or not to build the practice bomb dispenser... I could just go with not installing the dispensers too. Leaving the practice bomb dispenser container off would better show off all the tiny the details of the Mk-41 bomb racks I built into these racks, if I didn't add them.
The radio antennae wires need to be installed, the navigation lights painted on, some paint chips added on the wing in the walkway area, and this one should be wrapped up.
As always, comments are encouraged.
