1:48 Douglas TBD-1 Devastator

The colorful years of American carrier aviation

In the second half of the 1930s the machines on the decks of American carriers looked completely different from a few years later: a polished metal surface, a yellow upper wing surface and a tail in the color of the parent ship. Most of the markings on this sheet belong to that time, so a Devastator built from it will not blend into the gray-blue mass of the later years in a display case.

Six machines by the color of the tail

The machines on offer take in an aircraft of a scouting unit from the Ranger in 1941 in an overall gray finish, a machine with a blue tail of a torpedo squadron from the Enterprise in 1939 and one with a red tail from the Yorktown in the same year. Then come an aircraft with a white tail surface from the Saratoga in January 1938, a yellow-tailed machine of a squadron commander from the Lexington in 1938, and finally a training aircraft with a white 82 from the training command at Pensacola.

Polished metal and film

A metal finish cannot be saved by a matte coat, so the decals have to settle perfectly the first time. It helps to lay them onto a cured coat, to push the water out with a soft brush from the middle to the edge and to leave the finished surface alone afterward. The colored tails can be handled either by spraying or with the large films from the sheet.

The package consists of a printed sheet for 1:48 scale.

The days when aircraft were not gray

The colorful prewar finishes disappeared within a few months of 1941, so the window of time for a model like this is a narrow one. That makes it look all the more striking beside later machines of the same type, which already wear a uniform combat color.