Grumman F6F-5K Hellcat, Operation Crossroads, 1946

The Subject

The F6F Hellcat has a fairly familiar story.  Post war a number of excess Hellcats were modify as drones, the initial objective was for use as collection aircraft for radioactive air sampling during the Bikini tests.  These aircraft were painted a insignia red overall but with tails painted in unique colors — their control aircraft were painted with the same color coding to ease in identification.

Later Hellcat drones were used as crude cruise missiles, carrying a large bomb load and aimed at targets in North Korea.  By the 50’s the remaining Hellcats were used as targets for either newly developed air-to-air missile systems or anti-aircraft training.

The Model

This is the Academy F6F-3/5 Hellcat kit, basically a slightly improved clone of the Hasegawa kit, as the parts are almost identical and somewhat interchangeable.  The improvement made by Academy was to recess the details, versus the raised details of the older Hasegawa kit.

Building the kit is straightforward and with a little care goes together with almost zero filler.  I had to remove the guns and fill the leading edges to cover up the remnants plus a tiny bit of filler along the spine.  Otherwise this was quite a quick build.  

The most difficult portion of this build was the drone antennas.  These are added antenna that run from the top of the tail fin to the sides of the fuselage.  They are short, and after studying a few photos I was able to create the mount using a small bit of plasticard.  The wires are Uschi .01mm rigging thread.

Because the base color is Insignia Red, I chose to prime the model using Mr Surfacer 1500 white.  This ensured a nice smooth red color, however when I painted the framing on the windscreen and canopy Bronze Green to show the interior color, the red did not want to cover.  I applied quite a few coats of red using my airbrush and eventually it covered.

The Intermediate Blue was masked and sprayed, and then a clear gloss applied before the AlleyCat Models decals were applied.  Please note that while the link is for the 1/48 scale decals, the same sheet was offered in 1/72 but is no longer on their site.

I finished with a coat of clear satin and then added just a tiny amount of exhaust staining.  These aircraft appear to be in good shape for the short time they were used once repainted.  

Summary

I had originally planned to build this as a simple overall blue F6F-5 as part of a group build, but when it came time to start the painting process I came across my set of drone decals and decided to shift my path forward.  There are quite a few colorful Hellcats on that sheet and at lease one more will be in my future.

The Academy kit is ideal as a palette for decals, being both inexpensive and nice looking on the shelf.  Most of my Hellcat stash are the newer Eduard kits, but building one of these Academy kits is a real good way to get modeling mojo back.