So here's a build I've been wanting to do for a while, and finally have got round to starting. This is yet another Corsair, but will feature a lot of resin aftermarket to turn it into a more interesting piece.
This will be a model of the FG-1D Corsair owned by the Fighter Collection out of IWM Duxford, G-FGID. This is one of two Corsairs here in the UK, the other being the very well known KD431 that remains in it's original paint dating from 1946. G-FGID on the other hand is our airworthy example.
I knew I wanted to this is plane a while a go and I thought of ways to make it interesting. After seeing it opened up during maintenance I decided to go for lots of resin and to model the aircraft as it is today, shiny airworthiness and all, to make something a little different on the shelf. As such please don't use the photos of my build or the references I put as a way to decorate any Corsairs you may build in the future, there's a lot of changes that aren't applicable to someone modelling a WWII aircraft due to the aircraft obviously being maintained over the last 75 years.
History
G-FGID starts off with a relatively uninteresting history, which is pretty typical of a warbird that survives today since war somewhat reduces the lifespan of things involved. Built as Buno 88297, the aircraft was accepted by the US Navy on the 9th April 1945 and was shipped to Guam. It sat in Aircraft Pool Airwing 2 between June and September that year, before being sent back to the States during December and sitting in another aircraft pool in January 1946.
The aircraft then lived a lavish life on tour, or more realistically bounced around lots of different aircraft pools in different states, was sent to different Air Reserves where it did get some use, before being put up for sale in March 1956 with a total of 1,652 flight hours on the clock. From here it exchanged owners a few times, was painted up in a classicly historically incorrect scheme in the 1980s which is on par for aircraft at the time, before being acquired by the Fighter Collection in 1986 and in 1997 was repainted in the scheme of KD345 of 1850 Squadron, HMS Vengeance of the British Pacific Fleet which has been the current scheme since.
Starting the Build, the Cockpit
I bought this Aires Resin full conversion set a while ago, I was thinking about putting it in 'Ira Kepford's' F4U-1A build I posted on here but decided to keep it simple and just do a resin cockpit rather than the whole deal. When I was checking through the storage last month I remembered I bought a second resin cockpit for that model, when I thought I used the one from this set. With that little re-discovery I thought I'd make this my new main project.
The first step was to paint this in... Aluminium. This is due to me having a brain fart and forgetting that chipping the hell out of the cockpit isn't the result I'm going for. So I then repainted it in black, followed by the interior green we all know and love.
Unfortunately I could only find one somewhat poor resolution image of G-FGIDs cockpit, that being said the colours of a Corsairs interior should be interior green on a F4U-1A/D, but in October 1944 new instructions called for all panels above the lower edge of the instrument panel to be painted black. It's quite hard to really tell what's green, what's black and what is shadow in that photo but I went for what should be applicable with a 1945 -1D and painted up the side panels in a black, leaving the lower part of this cockpit 'tub' in green.
Of note in this cockpit are a few changes. Firstly, the Aires set can be built into any F4U-1 variant and this is done by making certain areas very thin to be removed. I accidently opened up that lower window which isn't applicable here, but it shouldn't make a difference when the thing is assembled as I made the same mistake before with the previous resin build.
Secondly wires were painted whatever colour I fancied. I put some red, blue, grey, green and yellow in there. On restored aircraft you'll naturally see modern wiring and this can be quite colourful, whilst I'm doubtful much of this will be noticeable later it does provide some visual interest in the absence of chipping. WWII reference photos indicate wires would either be black/grey, or simply overpainted in the same interior green.
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Also of note is the bottles, I naturally can't see what's going on in G-FGID as I can't find any references in here. On the right is an oxygen bottle that seems to be painted a shade of yellow in any WWII reference, so I did the same here in lieu of a better picture. On the left we have two interesting bottles (this applies to the base tamiya parts too), the Corsair had two bottles to the left of the pilot's seat. One was for the emergency landing gear blow out, the other was a cannister that would purge the wing tanks of the F4U-1 with CO², removing any flammable vapors from the fuel and therefore making them inert. This was done due to the wing tanks (situated right next to the guns) not being self-sealing or protected, ideally these tanks would be empty by the time the Corsair entered combat, and making them inert would prevent a fire. The wing tanks were actually removed from the F4U-1D so I snip off one of the cannisters as it's not relevant. Yes, having two cannisters right next to each other out of sight of the pilot did lead to accidents with there being at least a couple stories of pilots accidently blowing down the undercarriage (which afterwards cannot be raised) instead of purging the fuel tanks, which certainly didn't aid in combat to say the least.
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For the sidewalls I added a bit of wire painted in aluminium coming off of the throttle quadrant and going below the instrument panel, as can be seen on the real thing. Some throttle controls were added but quickly got removed by accident repeatedly so aren't currently on it at the moment, I'll re glue them at the end. The right side got a leather pouch as it seems to be that in the refence picture, do note that this isn't what the F4U should have as it is a few canvas pouches on a metal holder (on American aircraft, FAA seem to have different). Speaking of different, references used were largely that of KD431. There's a bit of weirdness going on there as the cockpit definitely doesn't seem to have much black going on in the cockpit, but it was built in November so maybe it just missed out on the partially black cockpit. It's also worth noting that it's not actually clear whether it's an FG-1A or D, the British ones lack some key identifiers such as rocket racks, and for a very long time it was assumed to be the D due to having the later engine with water injection but some modern research seems to have displayed that the very last -1As Goodyear built had that engine. Regardless, off topic for this, but either way its an invaluable resource for looking at a 1946 interior of a Corsair with plenty of good images out there.
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For the instrument panel a quick and kinda ugly change was done, the left side was filled in with some Mr.Dissolved Putty and a small bit of styrene was added. This should mimick the changes to the interior seen in the photo, notably the change in radio/transmitter on the left side. This obviously isn't a 1:1 accurate or anything as the instruments on the right are in the wrong places still, but about as far as I'm willing to take it. Naturally no gunsight here anymore.
The Engine
Well here's where the real work began. The resin engine.
The engine itself went together without issue. A mixture of included PE and copper wire was used to detail it up.
For the engine casing I painted up in a neutral grey, it seems to match what G-FGID has.
Now time for uncharted territory, all the work going on behind the engine. A lot of small changes went on here. First the rear of the engine casing was added to a piece that has some exhaust work on one side and some supercharger work the other. Interestingly, it seems the rear of the engine is painted red of all colours on G-FGID (naturally, not applicable to WWII subjects). On the other side, exhausts were simply painted bronze.
Unfortunately some weirdness went on with these exhausts, firstly the kit is meant to contain 5 intake manifold pipes which attach to the cylinders, but you need a total of 9.. And I had 4. In order to fix this I ended up just using some 2mm copper wire to make a somewhat passable fix, and also used this 2mm wire to join the exhausts to the engine as they weren't long enough to fit either. I used plenty of super glue mostly to fill in gaps, and then repainted it all in a bronze colour to try and hide as much of the join as possible.
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Moving further back some pieces aft of the engine needed to be removed. G-FGID, like quite a few restored aircraft, lack a supercharger. Its adds weight, adds to maintenance, and isn't needed for doing an airshow in the UK. It seems that the supercharger housing above the engine casing is still there, but the supercharger blower has been removed so those pieces were clipped off. The above the rest of the engine should connect up to that supercharger housing but it seems there's just wires/pipes coming off there and going forward to the engine, another modern change to the aircraft.
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This opens up this area quite a lot as those supercharger parts took up a considerable amount of space, hence why you can quote clearly see through both sides. Once this was removed the framework holding all that heavy important stuff was glued together and copper wire was used to decorate roughly in the same colours and positions seen on the real thing, lots of red wires, a few black, all going all over the place.
Finally a few changes were further made. The big tank at the rear is the oil tank, forward of that is a small blue tank that is the hydraulic reservoir. Between these tanks should be an armoured panel, but that's naturally been removed as bullets aren't flying at this plane any more. To the left of that blue tank should be a small bottle which is a fire extinguisher system, but I can't clearly see if its there or not so I left it off.
As mentioned colours here are different, wires shouldn't be red and seem to be either the same colour as the interior or black. Wiring is also seemingly quite different anyways. The colour here could be either Zinc Chromite or indeed interior green, it's not entirely clear but it seems past October 1944 they began to paint the majority of interior parts visible at any point in interior green whereas the earlier F4U-1A definitely would have had the yellow zinc chromite there.
And that should just about wrap that up for now, I got this done maybe about 2 weeks ago and finally bought the Tamiya Corsair to shove it in which arrived yesterday. First steps will be to make the fuselage more applicable by removing all interior detail there and smoothing it out, as well as cutting off the front part of the kits plastic to make way for the whole engine assembly.
With a full resin set we got some options, but I haven't decided whether I'll do flaps up or down just yet. We have resin control surfaces, but there's no point adding that unless I want any control deflection which I don't particularly need. Gun bays are naturally irrelevant so will be left unchanged. There are wheel wells, but these seem to just be painted in the Sea Blue so not a huge amount needs to mentioned about them at this stage.
Anyways, writing this has taken longer than I thought and I have to dash. I'll add a post/edit this when I get back later with the reference photos used that I haven't already included. Fingers crossed photos all upload or this will be a very barren post for a couple of hours! Also I'm still awaiting decals for the Bearcat to get that wrapped up, I'm not sure if decals actually exist of this Corsair but I'll try and cut my own masks for it where possible, but we are quite far from needing to worry about decals right now
13 additional images. Click to enlarge.
