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Pacific Corsair

This is Tamiya's "Birdcage" Corsair-an outstanding replica of the "bent wing bird". The cockpit is very well detailed and you have a choice of having the wings ready for flight or folded and the flaps are dropped. There is a choice of versions; the U-1 or the U-2 radar equipped version. There is a pretty decent pilot figure and a choice of drop tank or bomb rack and bomb as well. There is also a choice of canopies. I believe that there are aftermarket sets for the cockpit but they will have to be very good to beat what is in the box. The only additions that I made were PE seat belts (there are seat belt decals in the kit) and the antenna wire.

The instructions are in Tamiya's usual style and are very good. The only problem with them is that, as all manufacturers do, they use their own numbers to indicate painting details. This gives a paint mix for the cockpit colour, so this will vary depending on how carefully you mix the paint (you would have to use Tamiya paint to achieve the shade they suggest). I used Aeromaster US interior green but I think, now that the lower half of the cockpit should be chromate yellow? I picked out panels in black, including the main instrument panel. The cockpit was given a wash of dark grey then dry brushed with grey and silver. The dial faces are flat discs, so I punched out the dials, from the decal, applied as decals and when dry added Klear for the dial glass.

I sprayed the wheel wells and interior of the gear doors interior green as well. I have since seen info that the wheel wells might have been salmon pink, or chromate yellow? Something that I have not seen on other models of the Corsair is the flap bays and flap ends painted anything other than the aircraft como colours. I elected to paint mine interior green, to add a bit of variation in colour. The only real poor fit was the centre flap halves, the lightening cut outs did not meet, so I added a shim of plastic card. This was difficult to trim but I managed it in the end. Another difficult area was sanding the seam lines inside the flap ends. This was achieved by making a sanding tool out of a wooden skewer (making an angled triangle in the end and super gluing a piece of emery paper to it, then trimming to shape). As I also wanted the wing fold option I sprayed the wing fold parts interior green as well.