A Question On Corsairs

[Ambaryerno]

One of the kits I have planned to build is a Tamiya F4U-1A in 1/32 scale. I'll be building her as "Vargas Cowgirl" of VMF-422. This is the only photo I've ever seen of her:

 

 

From the looks of it, she has red surrounds and very faded tricolor on the fuselage, with the uppers very poorly defined from the vertical surfaces. However, the wing uppers appear to be considerably darker. Is this just a trick of the light I'm seeing the upper cowling seems to be less faded than the fuselage further aft? Or is it a result of the differences in the pain, with the non-specular paint on the fuselage being more susceptible to fading than the semigloss on the wing and stabilizer uppers? The cowling also seems to be darker than the rest of the fuselage. This is especially evident at the cowl flaps. Could the cowling have been repainted, or perhaps replaced? This photo was taken c. May, 1944, by which point the Navy had implemented overall gloss sea blue. Could the cowling have been taken from an other Corsair that was painted in the latter scheme?

 

There's a very heavy black stain that looks like it starts just aft of the cowl ring, back along side of the fuselage and upper wing, (though bizarrely doesn't appear to have covered the cowl flaps) and it looks like it may also reach the horizontal stabilizer. However, this appears to be an older stain, because the the step above the wing is cleaner than the surrounding fuselage, suggesting the staining was worn away. My first thought was this was a smoke or exhaust stain, but could this actually be from an oil leak?

 

I'm trying to make sense of the inner wing uppers. Am I seeing a lot of dirt and dust, or is this sandblasting wearing the paint down to primer? I would also interpret the reinforced step pad as having been worn all the way down to bare metal, much like the surfaces aft of the oilcooler intakes.

 

It's hard to make out the tread pattern on the tire, but it could be diamond tread. The tail wheel is completely hidden by one of the men in the photo, so it's hard to tell whether or not she had the taller tailwheel common on land-based Corsairs. However, it appears that her tail hook had been removed, as it should be visible in this image.

 

There's some sort of black lines under the national insigna that almost looks like text but I can't quite make sense of it. Anyone have thoughts on what that could be?

 

The big problem is has anyone seen any other pictures of this machine? This is the only photo I've ever seen, so there's no indication of what the left side of the fuselage looks like. Some of the other questions (IE the cowling color) could potentially be answered if other photos could be located.

 

Finally, what would be the practice for the various stencils, walkways, etc. on these aircraft? Because of the wear/weathering on the right wing I can't really tell if the tread strip is present. Nor can I really tell whether the walkway lines and other wing stencils (IE numbers on the gun bays) are present. Would these markings be repainted if the aircraft received a new coat of paint? Or would they not even bother with them?

[Oldbaldguy]

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Edited February 28 by Oldbaldguy

[Ambaryerno]

Plenty of Corsairs had tail art. VF-17 used it extensively since the squadron badge was on the cowling.

 

I don't think it's gun residue because the darker color extends WELL outboard of the gun ports. You can also see a very clear demarcation line on the wing leading edges all the way out to the tips.

 

I don't know how shot up that machine is. There's damage to the right wing, but it's unclear whether that's from enemy fire, or from panels having buckled when the aircraft wrecked (almost looks like she hit a mud patch and the right wheel sunk in and got stuck). There's no other visible damage that I can see in this picture.

 

And I have a decal set with the tail art.

[Oldbaldguy]

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Edited February 28 by Oldbaldguy
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[David Hansen]

I'll just confine my comments to the upper wings.

 

As i understand it, the leading edges were painted back to the first 5% of chord with Non Spec Sea Blue, which of course has a tendency to fade. Not as well known, but Semigloss sea blue is *not* simply non spec sea blue with semigloss dumped in. No siree. It's a different hue.

 

Because its a semigloss, it's going to be slightly darker to start with, and it was actually a darker colour. So, my guess is you're looking at Semigloss Sea Blue which has held up *better* to the elements than the non spec sea blue in other regions have.

 

The walkway lines that run along the forward spar, then outline the machine gun access hatches were only 1" wide. They can be very hard to spot in photos. My understanding is they were standard kit when the plane rolled out the factory door, but in all likelihood could be overpainted when the plane went through re work. It's possible also the Corsairs delivered to the Fleet Air Arm in Slime and Sewage did not have them. On my models i prefer to add them to break up the otherwise monotonous expanse of those big wings.

 

The anti skid walkways that run chord-wise, i'm certain were standard fit coming from the factory, but they can be obscured with dirt, oil, boot prints, etc. Its possible they were painted over but i kind of doubt it. Grumman liked to use a big piece of emery paper, bonded to the inboard upper wing surfaces, but i think Vought must have used something maybe like pummice powder, mixed with a form of epoxy, because in some photos you can see it starting to wear away, exposing the metal underneath. Vought stuggled with ways to reduce parasite drag on the upper wing surface, but the walkway configuration remained unchanged until the postwar years, where you start to see some pretty obvious variations. Interestingly enough, you do not see anti skid walkways on the later F4U-4, -5, AU-1 or F4U-7.

 

The inboard wing roots came in for a lot of abuse, partly on account of the angled surface and partly because access was regularly needed to the Coffman starter, oil, and hydraulic filler ports. A big reason why Corsairs are so over engineered is because of the center wing section, that used multiple layers of aluminium skin to provide the requisite strength in key areas. That particular region of the plane had some of the thickest laminated skins to be found on the entire aircraft, so it seems wear and corrosion was not a huge concern.

 

Just some food for thought. I do agree that you are looking at worn away paint on the spring loaded foot rests near the cockpit.

[Ambaryerno]

So the walkway lines could be there, but just heavily faded. The anti-skid walkways could be present, but party worn away, partly covered by dirt and dust.

 

How much of the inner wing would you guess from that pic is the paint being worn off vs. just dirt and dust? There's definitely some bald patches on the skin just aft of the oil cooler intakes on the inboard side. Would the rest of that be exposed primer, do you think? Or just coral dust, dirt, and grime that got blown back over the wing and kind of worked into the paint?

[Ambaryerno]

So I ran the image through a couple AI colorizing sites:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/nml26gtc4y1ppgih54sqj/VargasRecolored.jpg

 

Obviously not perfect, but does provide some interesting new insights. For one, the colorization has a red surround on the let wing insignia, but thinks the fuselage had blue surrounds. Were there instances of mixed surrounds like this? I know 17740 from the VMF-214 baseball photo had its outer left wing replaced with one from an older Corsair that still had the six-point national insignia, so ended up with two roundels on the left wing (one above, one below). Could the same have happened here? Or would it be safer to assume the AI made a mistake on the fuselage?

 

The forward fuselage also appears much more faded than further aft. You can JUST make out the demarcation line where the non-specular sea blue curved down towards the top of the wing, but then it appears to fade again as it moves forward, especially below the fuel tank cover panel. This makes sense if you consider the prop was acting like a big sandblaster spraying crushed coral over it.

 

It also reinforces that the cowling appears to be a different color than the rest of the aircraft. Especially when you compare it to the cowl flaps. There's also no apparent demarcation line to indicate a transition from non-specular sea blue to intermediate blue, with that darker shade going all the way down, though it could possibly be covered by that black stain (which is still strange it does NOT cover the cowl flaps). However, you'd think you'd then see it again on the cowl ring forward of where the stain begins.

 

Doesn't really help much with the inner wing surfaces, although it's easier to see where there may still be some patches of the semigloss sea blue.

 

[thierry laurent]

That is a great idea but keep in mind AI are yet far to be reliable enough for such exercises! This is useful to detect features you did not identify immediately as it is working at pixel level but the AI capability is limited by the quality of the scan of the original image and by the prior data analysed to build its "knowledge", that part relying heavily on what its developers initially did! So, I would not base any colour analysis of a niche topic on that! However, this will surely change in the future as there will be a time when an AI will know more than Dana Bell about Corsairs...! 

[Ambaryerno]

I know it's not perfect, but like I said, in a broad-strokes fashion it does provide some information (IE reinforcing that the cowl may be overall gloss sea blue).

 

Also, does anyone have experience with 1ManArmy's stencil/marking masks? From what I've seen their national insignia doesn't appear to account for red surrounds.

[Ambaryerno]

On 2/24/2024 at 10:49 AM, David Hansen said:

The anti skid walkways that run chord-wise, i'm certain were standard fit coming from the factory, but they can be obscured with dirt, oil, boot prints, etc. Its possible they were painted over but i kind of doubt it. Grumman liked to use a big piece of emery paper, bonded to the inboard upper wing surfaces, but i think Vought must have used something maybe like pummice powder, mixed with a form of epoxy, because in some photos you can see it starting to wear away, exposing the metal underneath.

 

Out of curiosity, how would you approach this on a model? I'd think a strip of high-grit sandpaper might have the right texture, but my concern is the paper would be too thick for scale (it might also make weathering, chipping, and wear on the walkways more annoying).

[Joe Hegedus]

2 hours ago, Ambaryerno said:

 

Out of curiosity, how would you approach this on a model? I'd think a strip of high-grit sandpaper might have the right texture, but my concern is the paper would be too thick for scale (it might also make weathering, chipping, and wear on the walkways more annoying).

I'd mask the area, then spray unthinned flat black or dark gray paint at high pressure so it lays down with a grainy texture.

[Ambaryerno]

1 hour ago, Joe Hegedus said:

I'd mask the area, then spray unthinned flat black or dark gray paint at high pressure so it lays down with a grainy texture.

 

Hm, a thread on FineScale Modeler's forums suggested either Valspar Terracotta or Rustoleum Fine Textured paint gives results in the right scale.

[David Hansen]

There are a lot of ways you could go about it, to include the Mig AMMO Brand walkway stuff. I definitely think it would work in 24th scale and *probably* 32nd. I saw it on a 48th scale Tomcat once, and it looked a bit too coarse for my tastes.

 

It *does* however look like it was applied directly to either the bare metal, or whatever zinc chromate primer was applied to the center wing section, before the camouflage colours were applied.

 

With my models, i've always done it with paint.

[Ambaryerno]

7 hours ago, David Hansen said:

There are a lot of ways you could go about it, to include the Mig AMMO Brand walkway stuff. I definitely think it would work in 24th scale and *probably* 32nd. I saw it on a 48th scale Tomcat once, and it looked a bit too coarse for my tastes.

 

It *does* however look like it was applied directly to either the bare metal, or whatever zinc chromate primer was applied to the center wing section, before the camouflage colours were applied.

 

With my models, i've always done it with paint.

 

Seems like another good option. So the question is whether that, the Valspar, or the Rustoleum would be the the right scaling. Either way, these options would allow me to chip it along with the paint.

[Ambaryerno]

Also, has anyone seen Grey Matter’s accessory bay kit for the 1A out in the wild, or has that been discontinued? I’d love to be able to open up my kit (not doing a reproduction of the photo, but a general maintenance scene).