Cat Mouth F6F Mod

Builder's Notes:



"VF-27 Grumman F6F-3 Hellcat is shown at November 24,1944 on the day of the Battle of the Philippine Sea that its carrier, CVL USS Princeton, was attacked by a Japanese dive bomber and sunk. Pilot LT R. E. Stambook survived by landing on another carrier as did his squadron mates, all of whom survived while their beloved Cats Mouth nose art did not! The word went out on the savior carriers that it was against naval regs to have nose art so the overpainting was on!



Six- inch HVAR rockets from Marine's Dream F4U-1A Corsair and bombs from Petie 2nd P-51D Mustang were added even though technically only F6F-5s had wings sufficiently strengthened to withstand the load. Outer landing gear doors were removed, trimmed, thinned and replaced. Front facing doors and all retraction arms were fashioned from Plastruct sheets and tubes and placed with black number 17s facing front. (Rob, I believe I e-mailed to you two pages of how-to on this bird last December. I'll do so again.) Northeast Graphic Art Sheet 7001 provided the correct scale 58" star and bar for the fuselage sides. Your Vraciu kill decals were surmounted with LT JG STAMBOOK letters cut from an AeroMaster sheet (should have been LT R. E. STAMBOOK but I did not know that until the Eduard 1/48th kit came out. Obviously this isn't a factory fresh plane: it is heavily weathered to show the effects of salt, sun, rain, shrapnel and speed on the paints of the day and sports dirty stains from oil and grease and smoke from the guns and the exhaust stacks.



MERIT�S Grumman F6F-3 Hellcat VF27 U.S.S. Princeton CVL 27 24 OCTOBER 1944



OVERALL: You will find this one of the best models of the F6F Hellcat ever produced by any manufacturer either as a kit or as a display model. (Could the cat�s mouth be any better?) Not only are the proportions perfect but also so are the paint job and the weathering. Rivet placement is correct as is the correct size and location of all panel lines and Dzus fasteners. (On the Hellcat, flush riveting appeared only on leading edges: all the remaining were dome-head rivets so that production could be speeded up.) You will be impressed by the accuracy and the extent of the detail in the cockpit and you will appreciate the tail wheel assembly as well. All stenciling that is there is placed accurately, though more can be added from Eagle Strike 1/32nd Hellcat decal sheets 32125 and 32012A. The propeller, the drop tank and its bracing, the pitot tube, the guns, the port and starboard navigation lights, the exhaust pipes and the oil cooler are all excellent. If you want to spread one or both wings and have it or them sit in the correct dihedral you must make sure that you have pushed the outer wing far enough into the stub to click so that the excellent engineering can take over. You swing the outer wing down into level position, make sure the upper wing D shaped tab is trapped by the stub, the click the bottom wing swing panel up into place and voila: nearly perfect dihedral for the outer wing or wings! If you prefer the F6F displayed with its wings folded, you may notice that the wings do not correctly sit at a forty-five degree angle to the stub wings because of the bracing engineered into the kit. Visually this is a major flaw and worth taking steps to correct if you plan a permanently folded wing or wings. Just pry the brace out, saw it in half, and reposition it on the outer wing underside. If one or both wings are folded, make sure all flaps are in the retracted position, even if one wing is spread. Elevators can and should droop.



IMPROVEMENTS: Aero Detail 17 has great information on the F6F-3 and F6F-5:



MAIN LANDING GEAR: Improvements are mandatory but are easily accomplished. You can easily remove all of the main wheel doors, discard the top portions, and rotate the legs to the front to back position. Change the �sit� angle of the landing gear by pulling landing gear legs to the front so that they are at a five degree angle to perpendicular and shim and glue to affix them. Cut off the rear- facing oleo scissors, then drill three successively smaller holes in the top arms and relocate the scissors on the lower landing gear legs facing front. Replace the top doors with rectangular doors made from white plastic card stock, add white smaller rectangular backing plates, and make and glue retractor arms located on the rear of the doors and extend them to top sides of landing gear legs. Spray the doors off- white and add black number 17 decals from the spares box. Cut off the bottoms of the doors at the top rivet line, curving around towing bar door, and then thin the door edges to 1/32 of an inch by sanding them on a sandpaper block before spraying inside of the doors off- white. Make front to back upper retractor arms for landing leg tops. Make brake lines from black rubber tube stock as well as off- white clips as fasteners to the landing gear doors and to the brake lines. Paint the wheel hub center off- white then weather with simulated grease and fill in the pie-shaped wedges in the wheel with black ink. To speed up manufacturing of the F6F-3, Grumman painted the wing wheel wells and landing gear the same Insignia White as the lower wings. When you re-mount the lower doors on the legs, make sure that the tops of wheels and the oleo scissors arms show above top front of the lower doors. You can add channel reinforcements at base of inside door. Add 1/8th inch high lock and pulley covers to bottom edges of canopy. You can quit now and have a great looking model!



You may want more detail and there are very easy methods to give it to the model. ANTENNAS: You could cut off the ventral and dorsal vinyl whip antennas and replace them with same length .5mm wire into pre-drilled holes and add 10/0 Indian Seed Bead insulators to their bases. Remove the thick thread from masts, and then drill holes through masts and replicate wire aerial with black .5mm Western Crafts # 880 Stretchy cord.



First you tie it off at the front mast leaving long enough excess for the radio lead, then pull cord through the fin mast until it is as taut as possible, wrap above and below, superglue, and then bottle paint fin mast Testors Model Master Intermediate Blue FS 35164. Glue in the radio lead insulator into the fuselage and then you pull .5mm WC # 880 Stretchy cord down from the aerial through the hole in the insulator as taut as possible and then superglue. You will have very thin scale looking F6F aerial wires and antennas.



EASY CHANGES: All Hellcats had their rudder trim tabs cocked to port. You cut the top and bottom of the tabs, slice the vertical and position the tab to port as per Aero Detail 17 page 54. Correct the tail data block by using Testors Model Master Intermediate Blue FS 35164 bottle paint to paint out white MARINE and through white numbers 12 and 80 on fin. Add a white F6F-3 on rudder from the Eagle Strike Hellcat 1/32nd decal sheet 32012A. Cut and install three aileron hinges per side made from white 3M Command Strip Micro Hooks sawn in half lengthwise and sanded to 1/16th inch wide. Use the same technique to make catapult bridle hooks that you paint silver and install next to the stub wheel wells. Paint interior of canopy braces and cockpit sills Polly Scale Interior Green A/N 611 and place chrome Mylar tape as mirror glass, while detailing the gun sight with black knobs and brown leather padding. Weather lightly with a silver Prismacolor pencil.



ARMAMENT: You could mount six, five inch HVAR rockets since the holes are there to mount them even although technically this is an F6F-3 that mounted neither rockets nor bombs. (But by the time of the Battle of Leyte Gulf on 24 October 1944, the wings of F6F-3s might have been strengthened and retrofitted to carry HVAR rockets and bombs.) Carve bomb racks from basswood for the 1000 lb bombs. You may buy six HVAR rockets from 21st Century�s 1/18th Marine�s Dream F4U-1A and the bombs from 21st Century�s 1/18th Petie 2nd P-51D from Military Toy Store. Fighter or fighter/ bomber: your choice.



FOR MORE REALISM: For the fuselage, use the more accurate scale 50 inch diameter fuselage stars and bars from Major Decals Sheet 7001 1/12th scale (the middle- sized ones) to replace the fuselage scale 45 inch stars and bars that are correct only for the wings. The scale center of the stars is scale 58 inches from the horizontal stabilizers leading edge as per Aero Detail 17 on page 56 and the bars follow the fuselage up-tilting rivet pattern. The scale 50 inch star and bar top is centered on the same place as the model�s (by now sanded off) scale 45 inch star and bar top and the scale 50 inch star and bar bottom is at the demarcation of Intermediate Blue and Insignia White on the fuselage side. From Bad Cat Toys, purchase extra kill markings decals and apply to them to the bare side. Atop the flags cut and place white letters LT JG STAMBOOK on both sides (Super Scale Decal No. 48-994 USN 60 deg. White). Drill out cockpit ventilation and gun camera holes in the stub wings leading edges starboard and port. Drill out a landing light in the port wing leading edge. Use a Grandt Lines HO scale headlight for the landing light and heat bend very thin clear plastic stock for the lens cover. Drill out the holes for the lift tube and put LIFT decals on either side of the rear fuselage. Place a pair of black hoses in each wing- fold front to simulate gun and navigation light electrical wiring and a silver cord to simulate a BX cable. Just a little bit more effort on your part brings a truly great model close to perfection!"