1:32 F4U4 Corsair

The last piston Corsair

The Vought F4U-4 is the ultimate combat version of the machine with the inverted gull wing which over the Pacific was among the most feared opponents of Japanese fighters. Against the older forms it received a stronger powerplant, a four-blade propeller and a revised cockpit with a better view. It reached the units at the very end of the fighting against Japan and proved itself again five years later over Korea, where it flew mainly against ground targets.

Why a single dark shade

From 1943 carrier aircraft wore a graded three-color scheme which was meant to imitate the transition from the water to the sky. On this version something else already applied: one glossy dark blue finish covered the whole airframe. Over the open sea there is no pattern of terrain worth imitating, and an aircraft watched from above merges with the water the better the darker it is. The gloss, meanwhile, was not vanity. Salt spray could be washed off a smooth surface, the finish soaked up less and it lasted considerably longer on a deck. A single-color finish also cut the work of a repair shop to a fraction.

What this set is for

The package carries two glazing masks, separately for the outer and for the inner side, and three masks for the national insignia. An inner mask makes sense in the large scale, because paint shows through the frame and without it the edge stays indistinct. The insignia masks stand in for a decal of the star with bars: the marking is produced in the same paint as the surrounding surface and no glossy edge of carrier film is left behind.