Tag: US Navy
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Northrop BT 1 – Part Six – The Arcane Scheme
I occasionally go to our local bottle shop and buy beer or wine. It is a big shop and has hundreds of varieties of booze, and the only way to differentiate before you buy is by the labels. I have given up being a gourmet or a gourmand and have finally come down to being…
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Northrop BT 1 – Part One – The Bargain Bomber
I took advantage of a stash sale one time to purchase a number of never-to-be-seen-again model kits. You’ve already seen one of the Eastern European maker’s short-run planes – the Mitsubishi ” Ann “- in this column before. This Northrop is the accompanying model – a contemporary in the air in the early 1940’s. This…
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Cougar F9F-8P – Part Two – Bass Ackward
I am not a naturally suspicious man. I allow people to control my computer frequently and am always sending out my credit card details. I’ve invested frequently in Nigerian investments. But I now look upon any Czech model aircraft instruction sheets with the same trust that I would give a 500Kg German bomb that was…
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Curtiss Shrike – Part One – Down From The Shelf
This Dragon Models kit of the Curtiss A-25-A has been sitting in Hobbytech for ages. In the early days I would have put it down to a high price…but this has been surpassed by Czech kits since then. Or to the odd-looking box art. But this is no worse than some Eastern European stuff. Or by…
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Vought Kingfisher – Part Four – Neutrality Patrol
And armed with a couple of 100 pound bombs to enforce it. I cannot decide whether the Kingfisher as a land plane is gainly or ungainly compared to the floatplane version. The gear is not too spindly but difficult enough to assemble. It must have been quite a drag for the plane – otherwise quite…
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Target Tug Cat – Part One – Sunday Browse
A Sunday browse in a strange hobby shop brought me up short this week – I found four items which I had coveted for months and which I had despaired of ever seeing. These are the occasions for which the credit card is made, and I have been abstemious of late. I was able to…
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Brewster Buccaneer – Part One – ” On The Sides Of Our Buccin’ Heads…”
The classic answer to the question of where are our Buccaneers… Now that we have that out of the way decorum can return. The Special Hobby 1:72 Brewster Buccaneer was the result of doing what I told myself I would not do; go to the Post -Christmas sales. To be fair, the sales came to…
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Douglas B-18 Bolo – Part Three – The Museum Ship
Is there any reason the US Army referred to their aircraft as ” ships “? I wondered at that – the US Navy referred to them as aircraft, and that’s not surprising as they would also have had to use the word ” ship ” in other ways…dealing with sea-going vessels. Why did they both…
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Grumman Wildcat – Part Four – Neutrality Patrol
This colour scheme on the Grumman F4F Wildcat is apparently real – it was seen in 1941 in the Atlantic aboard the USS RANGER conducting something called a Neutrality Patrol. It’s the standard US Navy Yellow Wing scheme adapted to the eastern seaboard. Neutrality? Was the USA expecting attack from the British or Germans or…
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Douglas Devastator – Part Two – Crates
” My God, Carruthers! They’re sending boys up in crates like those…” Well, don’t write off the Douglas Devastator TBD so soon. Admittedly they did not have sterling success as fighting machines in the battles they fought…but they did get some torpedo strikes. If the US Navy had addressed the problems of the Mk XIII…
The Little World 