Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat

by Christian Bruer

Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat

Tamiya's 1/48 scale F4F-4 Wildcat  is available online from Squadron.com

Here is my 1/48 scale F4F-4 Wildcat, no. 23-5093, from Tamiya. This aircraft was flown by Lt. Cdr. John S. Thatch, CO of VF-3 aboard USS Yorktown during the Battle of Midway in June 1942.

The kit is one of Tamiya's older efforts but it is nicely moulded. Only the rivet detail is a little overstated.

I commenced construction by cutting of the horizontal elevators to fix them in lower position. I also cut out the side parts of the cockpit floor section so that the pilot can look down through two windows in the lower fuselage. Then I built up the cockpit section and the wheel well.

The colour of the cockpit was interior green for the wheel well I used white.

After washing and shading these parts it was time to fix the fuselage and wing section together.

There are minimal fitting problems on the wing leading edge but with a little bit of filler it was done. Now I started building and finishing the engine and the landing gear. Than I fixed the horizontal elevators and the ruder in position.

Now it was time for the paint job.

I used colours from Xtracolor - Light Gull Grey for the lower and US Navy Blue Grey for the upper surface. Before I used these colours I pre-shaded the panel lines black. For shading the plates on the fuselage and wing section I took the original colour filled with some with.

Decals were from Aeromaster. It took a lot of work to fix them over the rivets in the fuselage sides. After a few days of drying I sprayed the model with satin from Humbrol.

The last job was washing and shading the whole model with water colours and pastel powder. I finished the model using the wheels from True Details and a Canopy from Squadron.

The Wildcat is a nice model. I think I will not be my last one because there are a lot of interesting planes flown by the Royal Navy.

I hope you enjoy the images!
 

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images:

Model, Images and Article Copyright © 2002 by Christian Bruer
Page Created 29 July 2002
Last updated 04 June 2007

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