1:48 Vought SB2U Vindicator

The Vindicator: the turning point between the biplane and the modern aircraft

When the SB2U joined the decks in 1937, it was the first monoplane scout bomber the US Navy took into service. It still had mixed construction, with fabric covering over the rear fuselage and the wing surfaces, and against the coming generation of aircraft it grew obsolete quickly. Even so, its greatest moment came at Midway, where a Marine Corps squadron attacked Japanese formations with it and suffered heavy losses.

In terms of color it is an exceptionally rewarding type. Prewar machines carried a polished metal fuselage, an upper wing surface painted yellow and bright stripes on the engine cowling, by which the squadrons and the parent ships were told apart. After the outbreak of war all this splendor disappeared under a monotonous blue-gray finish.

The sheet makes use of that change: it offers colorful elements for the prewar rendering as well as the sober markings of the machines of 1942. The colorful options tend to be the weakest part of kit decals, because it is precisely a rich yellow and precisely graded stripes that give low-grade printing the most trouble.

The stripes across the engine cowling call for forethought. The cowling is conical, so a straight strip will never settle on it by itself; it helps to apply it in sections, to nick the edge with a blade and to let the film soften each time in between.

Also worth noting are the engine cowling with its unusual cooling arrangement and, above all, the main landing gear retracting rearward into the wing, where the wheels stayed half exposed. It is exactly such details that make the Vindicator a rewarding subject, one that will not get lost on the shelf among the usual machines of the second half of the war.