You may well be right. All I can do is reference that spec I read about.

I've always thought that glare was an issue that the pilots handles with mostly flat black paint. There have been numerous posts and articles that F4U-1A and on, as well as F6F-3 and on, had the side walls of the cockpit painted flat black above the side consoles. Some even state that it was a military spec, but I have my reservations about that.
Joel

Brian, that photo was a real find, the best I was able to do on this end was a poor shot of Acft. #20 of VC-93, shown here:



This photo is from the Squadron/Signal Wildcat in Action book no. 1084, which is not the most current in Action version fo the Wildcat. Had I bothered to flip the book over (which I didn't until I brought it up to scan) I'd have noticed there is a nice color drawing of this acft. on the back cover which clearly included a plane-in-group number on the cowl ring.



If one stops to think about it, this only makes sense, these aircraft have wings which fold back along the fuselage to save space and are packed close on either the flight or hanger decks and there has to be some quick way to tell which aircraft is which. Something I noted on the drawing is the artist chose to show the drop tank with a dark blue top. I think this is in error, which is reinforced by your picture Brian. When I first looked at the photo of the real aircraft I thought the tank had a dark top, but on closer examination, given the stark lighting I think what we are seeing is shadow from the wing. If it is indeed a two tone tank it is almost unique, and at this point in time I've looked at a lot of them. Joel, after a fairly exhaustive examination of several period references I can't find any definitive evidence of anti-glare panels at this point in time. The first ones I do find seem to date from around 1948. This makes some sense, by this time operational necessity has taken a back seat to spit & polish and chicken s..t, enough polish and it's an issue. My guess is that the color was dark enough and the luster low enough that reflectance wasn't the problem that bare aluminum was. You know if it had been an issue, that Aviation Mate Dimwitty would have been dispatched to the deck with a paint brush and bucket of anti-skid to remedy the situation until BuNavAir got their head-and-ass wired together enough to put a permanent fix to it.

The plane-in-group number is an easy fix, provided my somewhat elderly decal numbers don't crumble on me. The zero-length rocket stubs were something I thought about early on, but lacking any specific photo evidence, I opted for the "Bliss through Ignorance" approach and blew it off. Your photo has put-paid to that notion. After diving headfirst into the "stash" a couple of times I came across a Hasegawa P-51 that wasn't otherwise occupied, and was willing to donate some suitable looking zero-length rocket stubs to the cause. Corrective action will ensue.

Good to hear about the rocket fix. I had a real "ah-ha, cool!" reaction when I saw the pic of your a/c.

Here are some other shots I found that will help you with the build.







No question here that the wing tanks are one color. It almost looks like the earlier non-specular light grey, and maybe a very dirty non-specular white.

Brian,
Another batch of outstanding pictures. You just have to love the one with the upside down parked FM-2. BTW, none of the pictures is there any evidence of that 2nd exhaust.
Joel

Oh, I think it's there, just hard to see. From the picture I posted earlier (with the red arrows I added, of an A/C pulled out of Lake Michigan, I'd guess) there is definitely a channel of some kind leading into the place where the cowling will mate to the forward fuselage. What else could it be except for an engine exhaust? That's all I can figure.

Joel and Brian, the exhausts on the underside are definitely there, they are very hard to see on the all-blue FM-2s. They show up a lot better on the restored acft:





Close examination of these period shots also show them:





The location is the same as the original exhaust stacks were on the F4F-3 and -4. What I did on the model was to fill the mounting holes for the F4F exhausts and filed the openings to a more flat appearance. On the flipped bird above you can see the exhaust stains on the outside of the gear door. The stains are much less pronounced and often seem to tend more towards the brown and black staining. Another minor item that seems to always occur is the small dark stains along a panel line just forward of the cockpit in the otherwise very gray exhaust trail typical of FM-2s. This shot is very typical:



These spots very in intensity but seem to just about always be there, as in this shot.



I suspect the pronounced gray staining is due to the amount of lead put in the fuel to boost the octane during the war (100 octane).

Until your build I had never focused on the complete exhaust system for the FM-2, just the large exhaust openings up top.

Very interesting. I am a fan of the R-1820, one of the few truly fine products that Curtiss-Wright Corp produced for the war effort (with a little help from Studebaker, among others). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_R-1820

Those pictures definitely show those lower exhausts, as well a lot of leaking oil along the lower spine of the fuselage.
Joel

Veterans have told me that the engine was "a notorious oil thrower."

Brian,
Back in the "good old days" leaking engines was common place from what I've read. Nothing was worse then the F4Us.
Joel

Well my sins of omission have been rectified, and at less pain than I'd anticipated. The addition of the small "6" on the cowling should have been a slam-dunk, but as it turned out it was more of a chore than I hoped. It seems that I am the proud owner of the world's largest overage and thus useless Microscale decal collection. Microscale did a wide collection of very good (for the day) but as they were proud to say, very thin decals. They went down very smooth and conformed well to almost any surface, their thinness is also their biggest vice. The thin carrier film just disintegrates when moisture is applied, my source of 6's just became an endangered species, on the verge of extinction. Once more with flickering torch in hand, I head into the bowels of the stash in search of anything that might have a useable white "6". First it's through the long forgotten volumes of the decal library (very similar to the one that was in Alexandria) absolutely nothing that I wasn't sure wouldn't suffer the same fate as my initial attempt. Then is was searching through boxes of anything with a dark fuselage. Finally, a Hobbycraft corsair, though withered with age, had something that might work. Into the water it went, then set aside to soak. After a short eternity I tried to budge it, nothing, a little longer, I try again, this time it moves, or I should say part of it moved, the top part of the 6 shatters and the rest just sits there like a Zero giving me the middle finger. I am now dumbfounded. Do I have an alternative? Maybe I could make a stencil that small? Yeah sure, like I could eat cinnamon bread and fart doughnuts. While contemplating more dour thoughts I happen to reach down with my brush and give the offending zero a nudge, whooza! the damn thing moved. Apparently it had to soak for forever and a day. I'm back in business, but I already screwed up one of the two useable 6's I started with (actually it started life as a "9" but I'm flexible). A quick review of the sheet reveals there are also a couple of 8's, happy days are here again! A sharp eye and a sharper x-acto knife and I'm back on the road again. I just have to be more patient.



Do it yourself "6".

Those were going to be my suggestions....an 8 or 9.

Looking very good. Microscale does make an old decal restorer film that you can brush over the decals, but after it dries you have to carefully cut them apart from the backing, before putting them in water.

I sure remember my rage years ago when my "quality" Microscale Decals just exploded into a million pieces when I tried to remove them from the backing, and had no clue why.

It is now time to espouse on the heretofore missing rocket launch rails which you now see on the above photo. I was able to locate a useable set by raiding a Hasegawa P-51 Mustang kit. The Mustang kit had 8 sets of these things which left room for error. The Hasegawa launch rails are connected in pairs, front and rear, which as it turned out was very fortunate indeed. Starting out the only information I had on these was I needed six pairs and a non-scale diagram of the layout in the Squadron/Signal Wildcat book (Brian posted a copy earlier in this build). That meant that more searching was in order. That turned up these shots:











The picture of VC-93 #7 that has flipped was very interesting (thanks Brian) a closer look at the base of the zero-length launch stubs looks to be a natural metal colored reinforcing plate. The China Lake restoration shot above shows the rear place panted but in some detail. Because of the light underwing color the front plate is washed out and I couldn't get any idea on that one. This was valuable because if left on my own devices I would have placed the whole series more inboard to avoid the aileron. Apparently there isn't enough flight control movement to interfere with the rocket fins. The China Lake shot gave me a good start point for the rear outboard stub and I placed one of the Hasegawa Mustang rail pairs on the wing to see what I had. Checking the result against the photo of flipped #7 which fortunately shows the whole arrangement against the national star insignia looked like the spacing of the Hasegawa part was close to what I needed, or at least it did if I had my decal in the right place. The shot of the FM-2 being hauled back by hand is pretty grainy (probably shot from the bridge) but with close examination it also indicates the lighter natural metal base for the stubs and it gives some indication of the spacing of the stubs relative to people for scale.



After eyeballing all the shots I could find of the stubs, I estimated the spacing between stubs at about 1 scale foot. This spacing also explains why the rocket fins are always in an "X" configuration not a "+", they're too close together. That spacing looks pretty close to my standard, flipped "7". Those reinforcing plates made my life a whole lot easier, now I could lay everything out without having to do it on the wing. Having the fore-aft spacing set by the existing spacing on the Mustang rails was icing on the cake. Starting this I had visions of having to measure and place twelve separate stubs directly on the wing, trees in the woods are spaced more evenly than I'd be able accomplish in that fashion. I had several different schemes to cover that contingency, all of which I'm glad I didn't have to resort to. This is how I ended up lining everything up:





The reinforcing plates are 10 thousandths sheet styrene, I sanded the edges to make them appear as thin a possible. If I were to do it next time I'd use 5 thousandths, it'd be closer to scale. I trimmed the front reinforcing plate some after this shot since several of the photos look like the front one is less pronounced. While I'm thinking of it, don't put too much stock in that Squadron/Signal diagram, I think they show the stubs too far apart laterally and too close together fore and aft. After trimming the front plate and a coat of Tamiya flat aluminum acrylic paint, the assemblies were glued to the wing.





The last shot was an attempt (poor) to get the same perspective as that on flipped #7 to show the location relative to the national insignia. As long as you keep the damn thing right side up, it looks pretty good.

A LOT of work involved in this. I'm impressed by the research you did.

I certainly 2nd what Brian said. I'm learning way more from your build then I thought possible when it 1st started.

Joel

Damn, I just had a major post just vaporize into the ether someplace, well here goes again. Having seen to the rectification of most of the missing bits (and we all know how painful that can be) it's time to get on with the weathering. Being a carrier based aircraft, most of the grime on the FM-2 was self-induced. With that in mind I decided to do most of my weathering with pastel chalks.



I have used these for decades and have barely scratched the surface of them, both literately and figuratively. These sets have provided any colors or combination of colors for any type of grunge I've encountered over the years. I select the colors I think will work for the weathering I need and then scrape off some powder with the edge of an x-acto knife and apply it with a brush. These work best on a non-gloss surface which gives the powder a matrix to adhere to. I'd previously given the top of the aircraft a light coat of semi-gloss to tone down the gloss after the decals were applied and now sprayed a little flat along the fuselage side where the exhaust streaking would go to give it something to grab. Now to start streaking.









The next step was to redo the flat black wash on the flight controls and flaps to give them a more separate appearance and to dirty up the lower part of the cowling to indicate oil leakage. Next I'll put legs on this thing.

I'm paying extra special attention to your chalk weathering as it's my weakest weathering technique. Time after time I'll apply it with a brush, and not matter how lightly I try to seal it with Dullcoat, I end up washing off 90% of it.
Joel

Finally got the main landing gear attached and she's standing on her own and looking pretty level.



In many ways this is the most nerve wracking part of the build, all those little pieces I left off so as not to break anything now have to go on (with all the aforesaid risk of breakage). The main gear went in without problems (that good Tamiya fit again), but care does have to be taken to ensure it doesn't go in backwards. It will fit the wrong way (from past experience) and only very close examination can tell back from front. The main tires received my usual US tire finish of a flat black base with FS36081 Euro I gray dry brushed on that to show wear. Particularly where the rubber meets the road. The tail wheel was done with steel and a flat black wash for the rim and yoke and Tamiya NATO black for the tire. NATO black is a new paint for me, but I've read good things about it and thought I'd give it a shot. I'm basically an enamel paint kind of guy but I've got a feeling that the less toxic acrylics are the wave of the future so I'd better figure out how to best use them. While I'm on the topic of FS36081 gray another use I have for it is US small arms. From the 2nd World War or just prior to it, US rifles, pistols and machine guns were parkerized rather than blued. This finish has a definite gray hue rather than a deep blue black. My preferred method is a base coat of FS36081 gray followed by a flat black wash to pick out the shadows, then drybrush another coat of gray, and then a light drybrush of steel to give it a metallic feel. These things are cleaned constantly which puts a lot of wear on them, so having a little bare metal showing is realistic. I'll use use gunmetal or black for European or Japanese weapons, again with the wash and drybrush overcoats. Granted not much of the guns show in this aircraft, but they got the treatment anyway (can you say anal-retentive), plus I drilled out the bore with a #79 drill (I think I have therapy on Wednesday afternoons). Photos of the wing drop tanks showed most of them pretty scruffed up, so I finished them with my usual treatment for large white areas. I use a base coat of Model Master FS36622 which is a little darker than the standard shows, then I drybrush a couple of different shades of white on top of that. Unfortunately the camera/lighting arrangement I use doesn't pick this up well and they come across in the photos as being more white than they are. The sliding canopy is typical of kits with a raised dorsal spine and designed to look correct in the closed position, hence they ride to high when posed open. I used my only Falcon vacuform F4F canopy quite some time back so I was stuck with what Tamiya gave me. I have used the following tools on clear plastic in the past with good results on windows and light lenses but never on a major canopy piece before:



After a quick feasibility study using the canopy of my test dummy which worked well, I launched into a little canopy thinning exercise. I went after the sides of the canopy with a jewler's file until I got a fairly good sit on the aircraft, looking at your only canopy at this stage of the game is not for the faint of heart. The next step is to start wet sanding with 400 to 1200 grit wet&dry paper until you get a nice uniform cloudy canopy. I then use gel toothpaste as a polishing compound on a clean piece of old t-shirt and buff away. I don't know if I'd actually put that stuff in my mouth, but I got it ages ago, cheap, it still works like new and at the present rate of consumption, will last well into the 22nd century. The finishing touch is a quick brush of pledge floor polish, and low and behold better than new. The final solution for the navigation lights was a base coat of Model Master steel with a coat of the Tamiya clear red and green. I went with the steel because it's a little darker than aluminum but still gives a light background to the clear colors. The red turned out good, but I think the green deserves another coat to darken it a bit. If one strains, and the photo is just right, you can see the IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) antenna along the spine just aft of the national star made from stretched sprue and painted steel.





















I'll finish up with some overall thoughts on the build once I get my wits about me and hopefully my final solution for the antenna wire.

Something called "binding wire" is great and I also have success with thin, colored nylon thread.

I like the white drop tanks!

You're sure one brave man filing a canopy. But the end results is what counts, and it looks perfect.

Weathering isn't overly done, yet coupled with the semi gloss paint it works well, as it has that "used but not abuse" operational look to it.

As for the Nato Black, it's my go to black these days as I rarely use flat black for anything other then small bits and pieces. As a matter of fact, I paint my tires Nato Black to start with, then a few washes of Earth and dirt on the treads.

As for the antenna wire, I've been using Stretched sprue for nearly 40 years. Never had any issues with it, so I stick with it. My brother has changed camps and now uses EZ thread.

Joel

Non-skid on wings? If you look at the #9 VC-93 A/C pic that I posted it looks like there is nonskid running along the left wing root where it joins the fuselage. Might be a job for decals on another F4F decal sheet.

Just sayin'. Hard to tell, but look closely.

Brian,
I took a good look and that dark seems more like a shadow effect the a non-slip surface.
Joel

It's open for debate, I agree. Many service FM-2s show no sign of it.