Corsair Cockpit - F4U-1 Family

by Dana Bell

Rivet Counter Guide # 1

Reviewed by Graham Carter

Dana Bell is an aviation historian. He has worked for the U.S. Air Force Still Photo Depository and served as a curator at the National Air and Space Museum Archives for nearly thirty years before retiring. Bell has published a number of books focusing primarily on aviation history, and I recall reading some of his work in IPMS Q magazines from the USA back in the 1970s ( info from encyclopaedia.com)

Now this is a most esoteric volume and one for the true ‘Rivet Counter’ or the modeller working in giant scale as it contains a huge amount of detail that will please the most fastidious of modeller or someone with a deep interest in the technical aspects of the Corsair or, more particularly, its cockpit equipment.

This is a 72-page A4 ‘bookazine’ with a soft card cover with a colour image of Lt. Jeremiah O’Keefe i the cockpit of his VMF-323 F4U-1D at Okinawa. In the Introduction Dana explains the rationale for this publication which arose out of a desire to record as much detail about the F4U-1 family as possible, partly driven by the arrival of Tamiya’s 1/32 kit early last decade. This resulted in a two-volume publication in collaboration with Steve Wiper of Classic Warship Publications in 2014 and 2015. Much cockpit detail had to be left out and this formed the basis for this volume.

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Thumbnail panels:

It is a mass of photos and drawings in both colour and B&W drawn from official reports and files from the 1940s as well as one colour image of the restored one held at the National Air and Space museum. Many of the images are either cropped, magnified or redrawn from the source material and colour details are explained or illustrated to help the modeller. There is an amazing amount of detail here and it is divide into the following sections:

• Introduction

• XF4U-1

• Birdcage Canopy

• Birdcage Armor

• Raised Cockpit Canopies,

• Seats,

• Gunsights,

• Eyebrows,

• Main Panel,

• Rudder Pedals,

• Bomb Window,

• Joy stick (sic)

• Left Console,

• Right Console,

• radios,

• Colors

• Serial Listings.

These vary from one to seven pages in length and include detailed descriptions and explanations of what is shown in the drawings and images.

This certainly is an magnum opus and should satisfy the most fastidious modeller, technophile or historian.

As such it comes recommended to anyone who has a deep interest in this iconic US fighter/bomber or who wants to really super-detail their large-scale model.

Thanks to Dana Bell for the sample.

Review Copyright © 2023 by Graham Carter
This Page Created on 22 February, 2023
Last updated 27 February, 2023

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