March 1st, 1945 - the battle for Iwo Jima rages, only 11 days since the first landings. Navy pilot Lt (jg). Noah B. Butt, Jr. of VC-76 is forced to make an emergency landing on the US held South Field after issues with a fuel tank - the first Navy pilot to land on the island.
This build came about when I found this article on the Iwo Jima models blog - https://iwojimamodels.com/2021/01/15/ki ... cat-70033/
I am always looking for references for carrier types on ground bases and this one seemed particularly interesting. After checking the stash I found I had suitable decals with only a little adjustment needed.
The kit is from Sweet Aviation, a Japanese firm dedicated to 144th scale since the early 2000s. The FM-2 is a lovely kit, falls together without problem and has lovely detail except the cockpit which is empty. Fortunately the thick canopy framing will hide this detail anyway.
I painted a representation of the seat and left the rest of the interior alone.
Oddly I don't have many photos of the build - I added a fair amount of weathering to the airframe to represent a hard working carrier type and the exhaust stains visible on most photos - for this I used AK Interactive watercolour pencils.
For the base, a layer of texture paint provided basing, then topped with several coatings of different pigment powders to give the 'black sand' look of the island. A Dodge WC from Butlers Printed Models received suitable weathering to add to the scene.
The figures are from 3djson, mostly from the Red Ball Express sets which have some useful poses. Although the photo and blog don't mention if the fuel tank was actually removed, it added some visual interest to the scene and in keeping with common practice, only one tank is being carried by the Wildcat.
Thanks for reading, comments and feedback welcome - see this vignette at the Scale Model World show in Telford at the SIG144 table.
