Heineman's Skytruck:

Tamiya's Douglas A-1H Skyraider in 1/48

By Tom Cleaver

A True Immortal

The Skyraider is one of the immortals among aircraft designs, the first naval attack aircraft capable of lifting its own weight in ordnance, the first naval strike aircraft to operate over 20 years in first-line service. With its long loiter time over the battlefield, and seeming imperviousness to ground fire, it defined the capabilities of close air support in Korea. Long after other Second World War designs were sent to the aircraft graveyards, and when the aircraft itself was considered obsolete, it still flew combat in a high-tech environment in Southeast Asia as part of the first-line inventory of both the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force and South Vietnamese Air Force, not to mention several smaller skirmishes in the markings of the Royal Navy and the French Air Force in several African colonial wars. There are numerous aircrew of the Vietnam war who owe their lives to the close support given the rescue helicopters by Sandy Drivers during pickups in North Vietnam along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

The Kit

There is a full underwing load of ordnance: 5" HVARs, 250 lb. high-drag bombs, two 2,000 lb. high-drag bombs, and six bomblet dispensers. The 250-lb bombs are (to say the least!)suspect in shape, and are the least well done part of the entire kit. The modeler doing a Skyraider with low-drag Mk. 84 bombs will have to fish them out of the Monogram kit or the spares box; however, there are plenty of photographs of Vietnam Skyraiders carrying WW2-era fat bombs - due to the bomb shortage of 1966-67 - so the underwing possibilites are limitless. In addition, if you can find the KMC resin update set for the Monogram Skyraider, the 7.62mm minigun pods and other underwing ordnance is included.

The kit cockpit has the early seat, which was the only seat used on USN versions. Doing the USAF Spad will require obtaining an aftermarket Yankee seat, which is included in the above-mentioned KMC resin set as well as a much better early (Navy) seat. Cutting Edge/Meteor also has the Skyraider cockpit with a Yankee seat.

The kit includes spoked and unspoked main gear wheels. There has been long discussion among modelers as to whether or not Navy A-1s only used the spoked version while Air Force A-1s had the unspoked, but since there are photographs with A-1s in both services using one or the other, this is something that can only be resolved by referring to photographs of the A-1 you are recreating.

Assembly

Tamiya is renowned for excellent engineering of their kits for ease of assembly; the Skyraider is so good it just might set a new standard in this area. An average modeler who can read and follow directions will have absolutely no difficulty assembling this model. I had mine completely assembled, including painting the cockpit, cowling interior and engine, in less that five hours, and I was taking my time.

Modelers should take note of the differing sets of cowling flaps, which are positioned at the front and rear of the engine. For most of us, using the cowling flaps open at both ends for an airplane sitting on the ground will take care of everything. Old Skyraider hands tell me that when the airplane was completely shut down and sitting out on the line, the cowl flaps were all closed, front and rear, so that is also an option. If you are doing a Korean War-era Skyraider, they almost always operated with the nose flaps closed during the fall and winter.

Flaps and Dive Brakes

Tamiya gives the modeler the choice of having the dive brakes on the fuselage sides and belly open or closed. Unless you are modeling an in-flight airplane diving for an attack, the choice is simple: on the ground, they were designed to be inoperable and would be closed. The closest you can come is that, on Navy Skyraiders, the lower dive brake would tend to droop when parked for extended periods. However, toward the end of its Navy career and through most of its Air Force career, the Skyraider's dive brakes were wired shut.

The flaps are also problematical. To be technically accurate, they were almost never left extended when parked, because it made it too difficult for the crew to get onto the wing and board the airplane. In fact, I have never seen a photograph of a Skyraider with its flaps down on the ground. The airplane is so big that climbing up on it is hard enough with the flaps in the proper (up) position, and would be nearly impossible with them down. That said, these flaps are really well done, and when open show the slot between wing and flap very well. They were so good that I put them down on one of my kits, and I am usually a bear on this kind of accuracy.

The kit provides the canopy rail, but most of the time this is hidden beneath a canvas boot, which the kit does not provide. I made one using Kleenex soaked in white glue, put it over the area behind the cockpit beneath the canopy, and when it was dry painted it olive drab. Other colors used on this boot include flat black and varying shades of tan. If you are doing your airplane from a photograph, check this area carefully and then choose one of those colors. Both the KMC and Cutting Edge resin sets include the boot, which solves the problem.

Painting

I first painted the whole airplane with Gunze-Sanyo H-316, U.S. Navy gloss white (FS17875); this is actually an off-white, and looks much better than what you will achieve using straight white, either flat or gloss. Once that was dry, I masked off the ailerons, elevators and rudder, then painted the upper surfaces with Gunze-Sanyo H-51, Light Gull Grey. These are both gloss colors, and, once they were dry, it took only a light coat of Future to give a uniform gloss surface for decaling.

Decals

Before proceeding further, I used a sheet of black trim to create the wing walks and the anti-glare panel on the nose of the kit.

The kit decals provide markings for AK-409, the aircraft flown by Lt.(jg)Paxton of VA-176 "Bumblebees" aboard U.S.S. "Intrepid" when he shot down a MiG-17 in October 1966, as well as for one of the VA-25 MiG-killers credited with half a MiG-17 from combat in August, 1965, and the CAG airplane from USS "Ticonderoga," circa 1965.

These are standard thick Tamiya decals, and to my mind did a poor job with the lightning bolt and bumblebee on the vertical fin, and did not provide any stenciling. I opted to use the Aeromaster sheet, 48-365, "Air War Over Vietnam Pt. VIII/A-1H Skyraider Pt. II," and to do AK-405, BuNo 137496.

Aeromaster incorrectly identifies this as the aircraft Paxton was flying, though the airplane is accurate as the airplane flown by Lt.(jg) Zimmerman, according to a photograph I have in "Air Enthusiast" Number 36; using this photo would also allow me to weather the model exactly as the original aircraft was. Mostly, I wanted that Bumblebee to look as good as possible, and Aeromaster did achieve this. I used A Third Group decal sheet of Skyraider stencils. I also used silver decal strips from a Scalemaster sheet to do the leading edges of wings, horizontal stabilizer, vertical fin and underwing stores pylons, as I consider this easier than trying to paint these areas and then mask them.

Weathering

Once I was through, the airplane looked so pristine that for a moment I considered modeling the contemporary warbird that carries these markings and keeping it spotless. This insanity soon ran its course and I was ready to proceed with adding some reality to the model.

The Skyraider is a "Dirty Bird." It was said that if a pilot performed his preflight and found the centerline store clean, he should refuse to fly the airplane on grounds that something was wrong with it. I defy anyone to find a photograph of an operational Skyraider that shows a clean airplane. That big Wright R-3350 threw oil and belched smoke every minute it was running, and when it was sitting there, it leaked. Even with cleanser, after a few flights the exhaust staining would still be evident no matter how many deck apes scrubbed it. Out on Yankee Station, the only maintainance performed was that which was necessary to put the bird in the air for the next mission, so the Skyraider got very dirty.

After I had painted the Light Gull Grey upper surfaces with Future containing Tamiya flat base to get the proper flat finish, I mixed up a bit of Tamiya Flat Black and Flat Brown, then thinned it 60-40 with rubbing alcohol (60 thinner/40 paint) and lightly airbrushed the exhaust stains on, building them up on the sides and down the belly; I also did rocket blast stains on the lower outer wings. Then I thinned the paint 80-20 (80 thinner/20 paint), and dry-brushed it onto the belly, to create the look of oil in the exhaust.. I sat the airplane on its gear, and painted fairly thick lines of this thinned-out color along the panel lines in the cowling and on the fuselage sides, and allowed it to drip and drain by gravity. I made sure to do fuel drippings on the two big underwing fuel tanks from their attachment points, as this is very visible in photographs of Skyraiders carrying these tanks.

I did not overspray the stains once they were dry, as I wanted a different reflectivity from those areas, to simulate the oilyness one would see on the real airplane. I did put some Light Gull Grey, thinned 10% with flat white, into some Future with Tamiya flat finish, and sprayed this lightly over the upper wings and atop the fuselage, to simulate saltwater corrosion of the painted surfaces. I do not know that you can see this clearly in the photographs, but this should be just a very, very light overspray. I used the same thing on the lower surfaces, where it is more apparent in contemporary color photographs. I suggest you study the air-to-air photos of the VA-25 aircraft that are in "Warbird Tech," since they show the kind of weathering I am referring to quite clearly.

Final Finish And Assembly

A wings-clean Skyraider just wouldn't work. It wasn't called the Skytruck for nothing. For underwing ordnance, I used the two large drop tanks and the four rocket packs that come in the kit, and four Mk.82 500 Lb. bombs with extended detonators from a Monogram kit. I think you can see from the photographs that the model has a very realistic look.

Other Possibilities

Since I had the old Monogram Skyraider unbuilt, which I was using for parts, I thought about a Skyraider with folded wings, since that kit provides the parts for the wing stubs. It was no problem convincing myself to get a second Tamiya kit.

I cut the wings straight down the fold lines on both upper and lower surfaces, then cut out the hinge areas of the upper inner wings. I made the hinge pieces from plastic sheet, with long "tails" that would fit inside the outer wing and provide strength to the assembly since cutting around them would "stress" the plastic too much to keep its proper strength there. One thing to bear in mind when doing this is that the Skyraider's outer wings raise up 90 degrees to the centerline of the wing in profile; this results in a definite "back-tilt" when the airplane is on its gear, and goes a long way to explaining how several pilots could have forgotten to unfold the wings and actually take off in the Skyraider with wings folded.

Since the Aeromaster sheet had one of the VA-25 "MiG Killers" on it, I decided to do that airplane. However, when I began reviewing photos in the Warbird Tech publication on the Skyraider, which includes a large number of photos of VA-25 airplanes, I realized that neither this sheet nor the kit decals was absolutely accurate as regarded the size and shape of lettering, particularly the "USS Midway" markings and the rudder ID letters, I did a mix-and-match from the two sheets, as well as from a SuperScale generic US Navy letters-and-numbers sheet, and came out with something that looks reasonably accurate.

Through the Skyraider Organization (did I mention before how really useful this website is?), I was able to contact retired Captain Ed Greathouse, USN, who had been CO, VA-25 on the MiG-killing deployment, and was able to find out what ordnance was being carried that day for the four airplanes he was leading on a SAR mission in North Vietnam when they were attacked by the two MiG-17s, which is how this model is equipped. He also told me that NE577 was "the best of the bunch in our squadron."

Conclusions

You won't spend a lot of time putting this kit together, so all that energy and frustration you have saved can go into taking your time to do a finish worthy of the surface it's going onto. It's not going to be hard to make museum-quality models with this kit, and the possible alternatives for types and finishes are wide indeed. Tamiya's Skyraider is one to have fun with.

For those who are interested in doing the A-1E conversion, using the Matchbox fuselage, the Cobra Company resin cockpit, and the Tamiya kit, allow me to refer you to my article, "Medal of Honor Skytruck," on how to do this conversion.