Omega Models 1/72 Resin Morane-Saulnier AC By Chris Bucholtz

The Aircraft

The F4F-4 Wildcat was a compromise aircraft in many ways, but it also was the first version of the Wildcat design truly attuned to the carrier environment. Unlike the F4F-3, it boasted folding wings, which allowed carrier squadrons to go from 18 planes at the Battle of the Coral Sea to 27 planes at the Battle of Midway. Squadrons would later balloon to 36 Wildcats.

It also had four .50-caliber machine guns rather than six, the result of a British requirement for their version of the plane, the Martlet. This increased the Wildcat's hitting power, but did so at a cost. With four guns, the Wildcat could carry 1,720 rounds, or 430 per gun. With six guns, this was reduced to 1,440 rounds, or 240 per gun. American pilots decried the loss of valuable firing time, having found four .50s perfectly able to inflict mortal damage on the Japanese aircraft of the time.

Also unlike the F4F-3, when the -4 reached the Navy, there was already a set of tactics to use it to its greatest advantage, although they were not yet widespread. John S. "Jimmy" Thach, the commanding officer of VF-42, had developed a tactic in which four planes could work in concert with one another to minimize the benefits of the A6M Zero¹s maneuverability. The "Thach Weave" required each section of two fighters to split-S toward and then away from each other, covering each other in turn. If a Zero affixed itself to the tail of one plane, it would present a good deflection or head-on shot to the Wildcats in the other section.

Yorktown embarked VF-42 at the Coral Sea, but the air group suffered substantial losses in the battle and was replaced, for the most part, by personnel from the air group from Saratoga. Saratoga was in port in San Diego completing repairs to damage suffered when she was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine off Oahu on January 11, 1942.

While the torpedo, scouting and bombing units came from Saratoga largely intact, Fighting 3 was somewhat different, including 16 VF-42 pilots, a group of new pilots from the Advanced Carrier Training Group, and VF-3's new skipper, "Jimmy" Thach. It also embarked a full complement of new F4F-4s.

Tom Cheek

One of the men to continue as a member of Thach's squadron was Tom Cheek. Cheek joined the Navy in 1935 and went to flight school in 1938. By the time of the Battle of the Coral Sea, Cheek had served with Torpedo 2, Scouting 2 and Fighting 2, and in April 1942 had been advanced to Warrant Machinist.

When the Yorktown's new air group was ordered into the air, Cheek was part of a six-plane escort for Torpedo 3, along with Thach, Ensigns Robert A.M. "Ram" Dibb, Edgar "Red Dog" Bassett and Daniel Sheedy and Lieutenant (JG) Brainard T. Macomber. Thach argued with Commander Murr Arnold, the Yorktown's air officer, and Yorktown CAG Commander Oscar Pederson, begging for two more planes. Without those two, the Thach Weave would not work and two planes would be on their own. Until his dying day, Thach was sure that two more Wildcats would have saved more of Torpedo 3 from the fate they suffered at the hands of the Japanese combat air patrol. Of the 12 TBDs that attacked, two planes and three crewmen survived, and both planes were lost to ditching on the way back to Yorktown.

While Torpedo 3 and the Fighting 3 escort descended to attack, Thach, Dibb, Macomber and Bassett were jumped by at least 15 Zeros. Macomber, who had not learned the weave, kept such a close formation with Thach that, even if he had employed it, he was too close for it to work. Meanwhile, Bassett's Wildcat suddenly burst into flames and dived abruptly into the ocean.

In the ensuing melee, Cheek scored hits on three Zeros, likely downing all of them. His tailhook mechanism shot out in combat, he survived a barrier landing; later, he survived both Japanese attacks on Yorktown and was forced to abandon ship.

Cheek served with VF-6 after Midway, then became an instructor at Melbourne, Florida. In July 1944, he became the hangar deck officer of the new carrier Bennington, then switched to the Large Ship Pre-commissioning Center in Newport, Rhode Island to help set up air departments for new carriers. Cheek flew and instructed in transports until his retirement as a Commander in 1956. He now lives in Pleasanton, California.

Having talked with Tom many times via e-mail through the Battle of Midway roundtable group, I thought his plane would be a logical choice as a commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the battle. Since he could provide me with first-hand details, I was confident that I could achieve the goal I set with every model: a finished product that could get the pilot's nod about its accuracy.

The Model

My Wildcat came from the Hasegawa kit, which, despite some imperfections, is a great starting spot for an F4F-4. In some boxings, most notably the F4F-3, the kit¹s wings are scribed with wildly incorrect panel detail; the kits have different lower wings, with different numbers of shell casing ejection ports, but all issues have three gun blast ports per wing and the F4F-3-style pitot boom on the left wing. Consulting a reference book on the subject, like the "In Action" or "Detail & Scale" volumes on the Wildcat, will help alleviate any confusion you might have.

The first thing, as always, was the assembly of the cockpit. The True Details cockpit set helps kill two birds with one stone, providing an attractive cockpit and a much-needed wheel well. The two parts interlock at the central console. Although some of the cockpit detail is difficult to confirm as correct, it was a vast improvement over the kit's cockpit. I cut out the flash from the lower cockpit tub and sprayed the parts with Testors aircraft interior black to spot imperfections. The tub and fuselage interior were painted a color as close to bronze green as I had in my paint supplies; Testors Italian olive drab was a near perfect match! Details were picked out using various sheens of black, and the entire cockpit was carefully drybrushed.

The True Details instrument panel was painted and installed, and the wheel wells were airbrushed gull gray (FS36440). The bicycle chain actuator on the rear wheel well bulkhead was made using very fine copper wire, the first of several additions to this area.

The kit seat was nice, but talking to Tom revealed that the F4F-4 at the time of Midway had no shoulder harness. I borrowed a brass seat from an Eduard seat for the F4U Corsair and added only the appropriate lap belts. I save the seat and the control column for installation later.

The engine in the kit is nice, but is a little lacking in detail. I carefully painted and drybrushed the kit parts, then added ignition wires to the cylinders. The reduction gear case was painted gull gray, with a small drop of blue at its bottom to represent the Pratt & Whitney manufacturer's logo, and the fuselage was ready for assembly.

I trapped the cockpit and wheel well inside the fuselage, and put the engine in its proper place. Next, I used superglue to seal the fuselage halves together. The fit of this kit is excellent; the only fit problems I encountered were the results of my own detailing efforts.

The front cowling ring was added next, followed by two lead foil intakes inside the cowling. The kit provides these in styrene, but the parts are overly thick and out of scale. My replacements look better, anyway!

At this stage, I discovered that, in my haste to join the fuselage halves, I had neglected to add the windows at the bottom of the fuselage! This presented a bit of a problem, since the windows were designed with a large flange that would enable them to be seated from the inside easily, but sticking them in from the outside was impossible. I carefully removed this flange, then sanded the windows until they were a near-perfect fit with the openings in the fuselage. To fit the windows in place, I put them outside-down on a piece of tape, then used the tape to position them in their holes. Nevertheless, the windows frequently popped out of their holes and bounced out of the open cockpit before they were seated properly. Once they were in place, I ran thin superglue around their perimeters, then sanded and polished them back to clarity. This was a lot of work to fix a problem that was entirely my own creation, but the result was quite good and I would do things the same way were I to build another Wildcat.

With the fuselage together, I sanded the rear cockpit bulkhead and the headrest to eliminate any evidence of a seam. I also added superglue to the gap between the resin wheel wells and the fuselage, and ground out this area using a Dremel tool with a round cutting bit. I had to add a shim of styrene to fully close the gap, but it was soon eradicated and I could move on to more enjoyable things.

The wings came next; the F4F-3-style pitot boom was removed and a hole for the short pitot was drilled in the lower left wing tip. Next, I added bits of painted tissue paper to the under-wing intakes to get avoid a case of "see-through-it itis". The upper wings were joined to the lower wings with no problem, and the completed wings were joined to the fuselage in an equally easy manner. The horizontal tail went on next and involved only the slightest bit of sanding and filling. The windscreen was superglued into place and was blended in carefully, then was masked with Bare Metal Foil.

At this stage, the plane was nearly ready for painting. I used Testors' U.S. Navy Blue-Gray for the upper color and gull gray for the lower color. I used a loose masking tape mask to get the feathered line between the two colors, especially in the area around the cowling and the trailing edge of the wing.

At this point, I was sneaking up on the markings that make this a Midway model. The F4F-4s of VF-3 were delivered in the colorful markings of early 1941, with red-centered stars in blue disks (in this case, large 58-inch disks in all six positions) and red-and-white striped rudders. En route to the battle, the order came to remove the stripes and the red centers, as any trace of red on an aircraft was found to be enough to draw the fire of allied aircraft and ships. The rudder was painted over and the red centers were returned to white, but the crews had the same issues with red paint that modelers have: it tended to show through the white. Painting the rudder was easy. I brush-painted a coat of U.S. Navy intermediate blue over it for some contrast with the Blue-Gray finish. For the stars, I'd have to be a bit trickier.

I gave the entire model a coat of water-based Varathane to provide a glossy surface for my decals. I used the "Felix the Cat" logo of VF-3 from the AeroMaster sheet for the F6F Hellcat (the scheme depicting Alex Vraciu's "Gadget" gave up the logo). The aircraft numbers came from a MicroScale HO model railroad sheet (No. 87-701, St. Louis-Area Shortlines), and tail data came from a Ministry of Small Aircraft Production sheet. I grabbed large red-centered stars and disks from the old SuperScale sheet for the JRF Duck; my plan was to mask and paint the stars' centers with white paint. When this was done, the center was "whiter" than the surrounding arms, the opposite of my intention. I stripped the paint and started trying to conceive of another method.

I finally stumbled across the idea of punching out disks of white decal trim film with an ordinary single hole punch; by pure coincidence, the disks were just about the same size as the red centers of the stars. When the white disks were in place, a faint trace of the red beneath them was visible. (Next time, I plan on using disks and stars with separate centers; I'll put the red centers down first, then add the stars over them.)

Weathering on this plane was minimal, since it flew a grand total of one mission. I mixed some burnt sienna water color paint with a few drops of water and a dollop of liquid dishwasher liquid. This method (I call the Hawkey-Boyer method, after Pat Hawkey, who first made it up, and Paul Boyer, who got the word out about it in FineScale Modeler) provides a goopy wash that I spread across the model. The soap thickens the wash, which gives it more of a grip on the panel lines, and makes it easier to get the excess off the model. This was the most successful wash I'd ever applied, and I'll use it again in the future.

When the masking came off the canopy, I added the seat, control column and gunsight. The sliding canopy came from the Falcon set; it was attached with a very small mount of white glue.

The landing gear in the kit is good, but it's hardly representative of the complex gear of the original. I glued the kit parts together, then built the rest of the structure using .020 styrene rod. In all, there are 12 additional bits of tubing installed, as well as lead solder plumbing, lead fishing lead brake lines and other details in the gear. I was able to carefully install this entire assembly into the wheel bay without breaking anything but a mild, nervous sweat.

The kit wheels are virtually unusable, with recessed ejector pin marks that straddle the intersection of the tire and wheel. However, the DML issue of the same Wildcat kit provides good replacements, with brake detail and without the killer ejector pin marks. These were painted and added next.

The tailwheel comes molded to the fuselage. As is usually the case, it broke off somewhere along the line, so I drilled the wheel strut and the fairing with a number 80 drill bit and inserted a small length of fine wire. When these three elements were all superglued together, the tailwheel had enough strength to withstand the rigors of holding up the F4F-4's tail. Short lengths of stainless steel tubing were added to the wing blast ports to represent the machine gun barrels.

I painted the propeller yellow, then masked the tips of the props and airbrushed them black. The hub center was added next, and the center of the propeller was painted with Testors steel.

I drilled a fine hole in the port fuselage and in the tip of the rudder, into which I added pits of wire. The fuselage post became the lead-in insulator, while the tail post was the rear aerial mounting. The antenna mast was added next, and after it was painted I added an aerial from strands of nylon thread from a pair of smoke-colored panty hose.

I carefully drilled out the openings for the exhaust stubs, then made new ones out of stretch styrene tubing, painted black on the inside and burnt sienna on the outside. Once installed and trimmed, they looked the part. The final touch was the careful addition of the blue lights atop the wings, the red and green lights on the wingtips, and the white light at the tail.

Conclusion

With that done, my Wildcat looked as it did the morning of June 4, 1942, almost 60 years to the day! My thanks to William Reece, and especially to Bill Surgi and Tom Cheek, who provided invaluable first-hand information about this airplane.