1:48 CATALINA - Black Cat

A black cat over the Pacific

Patrol Catalinas were given the nickname after the finish that cut their visibility to a minimum. By day the amphibious boat was a slow and vulnerable target, but at night it became an unpleasant opponent: with radar aboard it could find Japanese ships, approach unnoticed and drop bombs from a height of a few dozen meters. The crews stayed in the air for up to fifteen hours at a stretch and came home at dawn.

Two boats, two patrol squadrons

The sheet covers a pair of such machines. The first served in 1943 at the mouth of a river in the north of New Guinea; the second operated a year later from an atoll in the middle of the central Pacific. Besides the nicknames painted on the nose, the equipment includes fuselage numbers and small pieces of data, which over a large wing and a boat hull spread out into a surprising area.

Building advice

• Varnish the black base to a gloss first, otherwise the edges of the film will give themselves away.
• Light lettering on a dark finish takes a double layer; check the opacity.
• A boat shaped hull has sharp transitions; run a decal along one side of the keel.
• Do a weathered finish only at the end, thinly and unevenly.

The package consists of decals alone; a flying boat in 1:48 scale and paints do not belong with it. A model of the night Catalina is a rewarding thing for a display case precisely because it does not rely on color. It plays out with shadows, a matte surface and the contrast of bright lettering, and even among other models it comes across as a heavy, quiet silhouette.