16: Grumman F-4 “Wildcat”
LE Wildcat fut le premier monoplan de la firme Grumman. Il avait été conçu en 1935, en même temps qu’un biplan qui possédait déjà un système de roues escamotables dans le fuselage. Le Wildcat fut livré à la RAF à partir de 1941, où il reçut le nom de Martlett. Malheureusement, lors de l’attaque japonaise contre Pearl-Harbour, l’aviation américaine ne disposait que de quelques appareils de ce type, si bien qu’au début de la guerre du Pacifique, ils furent heureux de pouvoir se servir, dans les Philippines, de vieux chasseurs Boieng P-26, à train fixe. Le Wildcat, qui fut opposé au Zéro japonais, eut beaucoup de mal à s’imposer à ce diable de chasseur. Les pilotes américains avaient beau chercher toujours la rencontre dans le plan vertical, ils n’en essuyaient pas moins des pertes sévères.
Il leur fallut étudier une technique particulière de combat, dont la mise au point coûta bien des vies humaines. Le Wildcat resta néanmoins en activité jusqu’à la bataille des îles Salomon et de Guadalcanal pour être relevé finalement par le Grumman Hellcat et par d’autres appareils de performances plus brillantes. Le Grumman Wildcat avait été conçu pour effectuer d’éventuels amerrissages forcés en pleine mer. C’est pourquoi ses ailes avaient été remontées au centre du fuselage afin de permettre à ce dernier de faire l’office de coque.
Caractéristiques : Envergure : 11,6 m. – Longueur : 8,5 m. – Moteur : F-4 F4 : 1 moteur Pratt et Witney R-1830 de 1.200 C.V. – F-4 F7 : 1 moteur Wright ” Cyclone ” R-1.820 de 1.200 C.V. – Armement : F4 F-4 : 4 mitrailleuses de 12,7 mm. – F4 F-3 et F4 F-7 : 6 mitrailleuses de 12,7 mm. – Vitesse maximum : F4 F-3 et F4 F-4 : 53 1 km/h. – F4 F-7 : 523 km/h.
The finished model:
The kit:
The vision:
Sometimes, you miss the trees in the forest. I originally bought this box for a 1/144 Leijiverse project, The Revenge Buried in the Mountain. It’s a beautiful kit – as pretty much anything that comes from Sweet is – and I was excited to get started on the build. I was rolling along, building two planes at once and got as far as gluing the fuselage sides together and painting the engine block before I realised I had a problem – it was the wrong plane!
I’m not sure how I missed it, but in my rush to get started on the Leijiverse project, which clearly calls for two F6F Hellcats (and a A2M3 Zero), I went out and bought a box for F4F Wildcats. It wasn’t until it came time to look at the undercarriage fuel tanks that I realised that I’d started down the wrong path entirely. So I carefully rebagged my partially completed builds and put them back in the box and back into my stash. So when it came time to get started in earnest on my Voir Et Savoir 1/144 projects, I knew I already had a head-start on at least one particular project. So there is a gap of several months between pics 5 and 6 in the gallery below. No matter, it’s still a sweet kit.
The build:
As you can see from the lack of pictures in the gallery, there’s really not much to say about the build process itself. The kit is so well engineered that even at 1/144 scale, it goes together like a dream. There’s basically no putty or sanding, there’s ample room to fit the small DC motor in, and still have plenty of room for a 1/144 scale pilot to boot.
The only thing I was fretting a bit about was the markings. Given the somewhat random and fictional nature of the tail unit markings and aircraft registration numbers, it’s quite hard to find the right decals. So instead of spending a fortune trying to match the right sized white/black/yellow/red numbers, I just decided to go with whatever I could reasonably get out of the stash. So you’ll notice that the white “16” in the image has been changed to a white “15” in the build. That’s not a mistake, it’s just the product of a practical approach. For this particular boxing, I even had to swap the WWII-era roundels from a Revell Airacobra box (but luckily it was a 1-to-1 swap instead of a swipe).
All in all, I’d say this was a pretty successful outing for my first Voir et Savoir project. Feel free to leave me a comment and tell me what you think.
