VMA131Marine

Apparently, the top weight of the masts was causing the hull to sag at a rate of 0.5 cm/year. They won't be replaced until the structural renovation of the ship is complete, which could be another decade.

You are mistaken! 37 ft 8-3/4 in = 452.75 inches. That equals 18.8 inches in 1/24th scale so the Trumpeter kit is too long.

Just find 4,999 other people who will commit to spending $450 for one and I'm sure you could get a good kit made.

Reboxed Academy kits! I suspect they will do some new tools of their own if this range proves popular.

They are nice, but the FineMolds kits are better.

The cowling lip of the TBM-3 has intakes at the 12 o'clock and 6 o'clock positions whereas the TBF-1C only has one intake at the 12 o'clock position. That's the major external difference I'm aware of.

Since when does 25 minute walk = inaccessible? It's all paved; it's not like you have trudge over the Yorkshire Moors or anything. Doesn't London have Uber if you really don't want to walk?

Only because Squadron Mail Order refused to sell it in its original form.

One thing about drawings like this to be careful of is that they typically say on them "DO NOT SCALE." Which basically means you can use dimensioned lengths and radii, but you shouldn't take measurements directly from the drawing and scale them up (or down). To know if this drawing accurately represents the P-40F/L cowling profile you would need to use the toleranced dimension data from the manufacturing drawing of the individual parts of the cowl assembly.

Eduard has >10 of the 1/32 P-40N Limited Edition kit still in stock and currently on sale at half price ($82.50 to the US market). That actually seems like a really good deal considering all the included extras. https://www.eduard.com/store/eduard/warhawk-1-32.html?cur=2&listtype=search&searchparam=1%2F32

It's going to take more than a sanding stick to fix the cowl on this kit. The excessive curvature means the centerline of the prop is too low. If you move it up you'll have to add height to the radiator intake. In short, it will take major surgery to correct.

Worldwide demand??? We're talking model kits not iPhones! If the market for 1/32 B-24's was in excess of 10,000 kits, some company would have done one before now. 2000 kits seems like a reasonable production run if Trumpeter can get near $100/kit (feasible with a street price of $200+). Figure $100k-$150k to develop the kit and that would still leave room for a decent profit margin. For reference, IPMS-USA (which you would figure is the biggest market) only has 5,000 members IPMS-UK has 4,000 members. If you could sell this kit to 10% of each of those groups (a pipe dream) that's only 900 sales.

Compare the line of the upper cowl in this image to that of the kit parts and the Trumpeter colour profiles. Notice how the line is essentially straight past the forward-most exhaust and only curves slightly between that point and the spinner backplate. Then look at what Trumpeter did. They could easily have got this right but they just don't care! Short-tail 'F' Long-tail 'L'

You are not wrong! And the nose on this model is also very wrong.

Your conclusion is at odds with that of Squadron Leader Clive Rowley (former CO of the BBMF) https://www.scotsman.com/news/uk/dambusters-true-impact-revealed-70-years-on-1-2932144 Clive Rowley, a former commanding officer of the Royal Air Force’s prestigious Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (BBMF) turned aviation historian and author, said the military and strategic significance of destroying three dams in the industrial heartland of Germany in 1943 has only just been realised. Now, extensive research carried out by retired Squadron Leader Mr Rowley suggests that the loss of water caused by the dams’ destruction had a far greater effect than many realised even at the time – from leaving firefighters powerless to put out the flames of British incendiary bombs to cutting vital German steel production due to a lack of water for cooling. The cost of repairing the damage caused by 617 Squadron’s raid ran to the equivalent of £5.9 billion in today’s money and 7,000 workers who would otherwise have been building the Atlantic Wall to prevent the D-Day landings had to be called away to fix the ruined dams. It was an economic disaster for the Third Reich that diverted significant resources away from Germany’s war effort at a critical point during the conflict. Four power stations and 12 war production factories were destroyed, while about 100 other factories were damaged, railway bridges were incapacitated, road bridges knocked down and 3,000 acres of farmland destroyed. Coal production dropped by some 20,000 tonnes and steel production by about 180,000 tonnes in the month that followed. Mr Rowley said: “In that sense it was truly militarily important, strategically important. I think that is more modern research that has uncovered that, and it hasn’t been widely recognised until now.”