1:72 Grumman TBM-3 Avenger landing flaps

Lowered Avenger flaps in 1:72 from photo-etched sheet

In kits the landing flaps tend to be part of the wing, so they cannot be opened and their trailing edge looks far too bulky. Photo-etched replacements solve that problem: metal has a thickness true to scale and a flap can be placed in any position, including fully lowered. The set contains metal parts, and the kit of the torpedo bomber is needed separately.

The carrier giant from Grumman

The Avenger was the largest single-engine carrier aircraft of its day and carried a torpedo or bombs inside the fuselage. The letter M in the TBM designation belongs to the production lines of the General Motors division, which built the type under license, while the design comes from Grumman. The TBM-3 version with a more powerful engine made up the most numerous series and operated at the close of the war in the Pacific both against ships and against ground targets.

Before you start the build

Cutting the flap out of a finished wing is the most demanding part of the work; do it with a fine saw and finish the cut with a scalpel. Bend the metal parts gradually and keep trying them dry, so that the angle of deflection matches photographs of a parked machine. Paint the inside of the space under the flap before the part is glued on, because a brush will not get in there afterward.

Intended for

• modelers who build aircraft in a parked configuration
• builders of American carrier hardware from the Pacific
• advanced modelers who dare to cut into a wing
• 1:72 scale and models of the torpedo-carrying Avenger