Tag: US Navy
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Higgins LCVP – Part Two – The Built-up Barge
I can be no more complimentary than to refer to this Airfix landing craft as a barge. I admire barges. My whole family admired them – so much so that we built them for years for service on Canadian rivers and lakes. To our credit, none of them ever sank. The LCVP kit from Airfix…
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Angels
The second squadron of Plasticville fighters. My purchase of three Plasticville airport hangars some years ago added more aircraft to the pile. For a while I thought of them as US naval jets, but a Plasticville on-line forum identifies them as Douglas X-2 Skyrockets. I think this is right, but it didn’t stop me from…
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Lockheed S-3A Viking – Part Three – I990’s
The chief raison d’être for the S-3A was hunting Soviet submarines in the 1970’s and 1980’s. With the 1990’s and the Reds beaching most of their fleet. the plane was reconfigured for surface surveillance and attack and garnered war honours in several conflicts. The ability to haul bombs and rockets as well as targetting gear…
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US Navy Phantom II – Part Three – Repeated Masking
Sometimes I make work for myself, and sometimes people make it for me. This Airfix US Navy scheme is really quite simple – the top light gull grey and the bottom white – but the navy decided to complicate things by painting some of the flying surfaces in white as well. Indeed they also apparently…
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Chance Vought Cutlass – Part Four – Ensign Killer
That, unfortunately, was the nick-name applied to this fighter in US Navy service. It was not a long service life. The type was found to be difficult to land, dangerous, and of marginal performance. Better offerings came from Grumman and McDonnell. The navy knew when to fold the cards and return these things to shore-based…
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US Navy Carrier Deck – Part Two – Ready To Launch
As soon as I find some deck crew and a mule tractor. And I am looking – the Italeri kit has turned out a beauty, a one-day build, of course, and I got to use some of he enamel paints that were kindly given to me. The intricate blast shield mechanism came out perfectly. As…
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Grumman F3F – Part Four – Red Ripper
Well, that’s what the colour call-out said. VF-4 Red Rippers embarked on the USS RANGER – pre 1941. I have been adding steadily to the Yellow Wing Navy shelf for years. So far I’ve resisted the temptation to paint the scheme on planes that never carried it and I’m glad to see that there were…
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Boeing X-Plane – Part One – The Nearly-Rans
I am no great fan of ” what-if ” modelling. Much of it is speculative and not a little disturbing. I see attitudes in the builders that are not supportable in real life. But I will admit aircraft and other items that were actually built to try to win government contracts. Even if they did…
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No Apologies Kingfisher
This post is somewhat different from my normal practise…You get to see it built without seeing it a’building. This is because it is very nearly the same as the wheeled version made by the same maker – AZ. I built one last year in that configuration with a full report. Refer to it if you…
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Northrop BT 1 – Part Seven – Why Was It Not Named?
Dauntless, Helldiver, Avenger, Hellcat…all good historic names for US Navy aircraft. The Army Air Force had Mustangs and Thunderbolts and such. Why was the BT 1 just a code, instead of a name? I suspect it is because it never established itself in the affections of the press – or at least in the press…
The Little World 