October 1944, the USN Carrier Gambier Bay is lost during the Battle off Samar forcing many of its air fleet to divert either to other carriers or to the Army airfield at Tacloban on Leyte in the Philippines.
VC10 squadron continued to operate for a short time from the muddy Philippine air strips. Here a joint crew of Navy and Army mechanics try to fix an issue with the external fuel tank linkage on one of the FM-2s.
This build was part of my 12 Builds of Christmas project - this started as a desire to take a break from a number of very complicated builds that were clogging up my bench and sapping the mojo, instead to focus on 12 straight forward builds on straight forward vignette bases - using a production line technique for efficiency.
I started on the 12th December with the original plan to complete all the builds by the 22nd January IPMS Bolton show. As it was, the project took a lot longer, as one might expect. Instead I ended up splitting the project in half and completing the first six during February of which this was one.
The FM-2 kit comes from Sweet Models in Japan, these are really high quality kits with a great reputation and deservedly so - the exterior boasts superb but subtle detail, the only downside is the interior, the kit only really having a blank space, but at least with the heavily framed canopy, not much will be visible.
She went together almost seamlessly, even the complex undercarriage is well represented, if slightly vague on the instructions - I found the Arma hobby 1/72 sheet a useful reference for this part.
Cowling fitted, she joined the mass production ranks to await the next stage.
One of the great things about this build is that I was able to use the easy kits like the Wildcat, to chivvy along the more recalcitrant models, like the Mark 1 La-7, because I had committed to completing each to the same point in production before starting on the next stage.
After primer, the Wildcat went into blue - such an easy paint job I apparently didn't even photograph it. I used the AK Interactive 3G paints which brush on so smoothly, although some of their colour references are a bit suspect - to me this one looked fine.
Next stop the decals.
This kit comes with a great array of markings, including the more famous McGraw FM-2, but I picked B19 so I could model it on a land based airfield scene. As the kit comes with a closed canopy and unfoldable wings, it looks rather odd on a carrier deck scene - fortunately I do have some Brengun vacform canopies to hopefully allow an open canopy on a future build.
The production line at work, again it was a good motivation, doing lots of decals at once meant I could focus on this alone for an evening and not get distracted by other builds at other stages.
The Sweet decals are very nice and a lot thinner than many other Japanese decals so went on without problems.
Unfortunately problems did arrive on the varnish stage. One part of this project was my aim to brush paint everything. With my living room model table setup, airbrushing is not practical and rattle cans outside are fine in summer but winter weeknights are too dark.
Accordingly I used Citadel varnish which worked fine in matt form on the other airframes, but when I tried to paint the Wildcat in gloss I must have gotten the thinning out as it looked like the plane had just come out of the water.
Fortunately I was able to take this off with some high grade sandpaper and after retouching a few paint spots, I went for a matt finish instead.
Off camera I did weather the aircraft with metallic paint and AK pencils along with some pigment dust around the wheels to match the colour of the base. In normal service the types would have been in very good condition, but operating from a remote airbase it seems quite likely to me that they ended up a little worse for wear.
All twelve of the aircraft are to be based on my new standard base type - 10x10cm canvas boards with masked edges to provide a white border. All of my models are intended to be shown on model show displays, so having a distinctive base makes for a nice consistency and good visibility, it also makes them much more convenient for transporting.
For this scene I originally used a thick 'Russian' mud, but it wasn't appropriate so I made a new one in light brown mud with static grass (the other base is being recycled into a 1/35 postapoc figure base).
The jeep is a 3d printed piece from Ray Rimes models, the stirations are magnified in closeup but not visible at normal viewing distance. This was painted in standard colours and brushed with some pigment to match the soil base.
The final step for the aircraft was the aerial wire. I use 0.07mm wire for this which is particularly good for airframes like this where the aerial has a kink in it, very hard to reproduce with thread. I was able to prebend the wire before fitting.
I do this with the aircraft already glued in place to provide an easy grip and limit future handling.
Finding some suitable figures proved a little tricky. I ended up with some Arrowhead Minatures whitemetal Panzer crew who have a similar cap to those sported by USAAF ground crew in the Pacific. I painted two up in khaki but gave the third man a navy style blue top - perhaps a Gambier Bay evacuee?
To finish off the scene I scattered around some discarded fuel tanks and some photoetched tools from Arrowhead and Brengun and called it done.
Thanks for reading and enjoy the photos.
