Hi guys and gals. I have wanted to build an F8F for a long time. The look of this brute always astonishes me. Although it somehow menaged to fall between major conflicts and missed both WW2 and Korean War it menaged to find some spicy action in exotic places in exotic Air Forces. So my hands were itchy since Revell Germany reissued the aged Monogram kit from the 60's. In my oppinion Revell's choice of decas were a bit on the stale side and rather boring. Since I have spare NVAF roundels from an AT-28 kit I built a few years ago I decided to finish my kit as a South Vietnam bird.
The kit is what you can call as rudimentary with, as you may expect from kits of that age, a joke of a cock pit, very unfortunate wheel wells, raised panel lines(with considerate exceptions of wing fold lines and aelerons) and usual hard fitting of used molds that you face in reissue kits. On the other hand there is a pilot figure that could blow your mind with its quality compareing to the aircraft itself.

Originally I was planing to join the Fighter Bomber Campaigne but was too slow...that's me...
I decided not to go with detail and finish as quick as I can since I have a horrible problem with unfinished models on my desk. Also decided to do a "probable" plane looking at the photos since, unfortunately although their number were few, not all aircraft was documented. Of course I was in for a surprise when I realised that at the time VNAF was flying Bearcats they were using double upper and double lower roundels unlike their later USAF fassion. Since I lacked two roundels in total, and after painting the South Vietnam tail flag with airbrush, decided to try painting using my girlfriend's Cricut.

Outcome was a sort of disaster. Upper surface masks peeledthe reds while the lower ones were near perfect(for my standards that is).


But that served pretty good for my initial intention to build a work abused airframe near to their retirement in 1963-64. As a few photos show even the side roundels were chipping off partially. So I went with the flow and exegerated the wear and tare.

I finished off with early WW2 era start roundel decals and other insignia, also painting the letter H in the tail. I also sawed off the mold stricken 20mm gun barrels since (I dont know the technicality weather they had no guns or they have shorter barreled .50 cals) most of the VNAF and French AF (where they were acquired from)bird photos didn't have them. Finished off with loads of oil and gas leak soot and smoke; a pair of 7x 2.75inch rocket lauchers from my chopper spares stash and hand made antennas. The outcome was, although not my best, satisfying.




To anyone who has not built one yet but is thinking about: It is over all a decent kit if you accept the fact that it is, for an injection mold, way older that it should have been. Guns are a must go, you can go to a French AF or Blue Angels finish, wheel bays are non-existent so may be better inflight or a diorama, wing to fuselage fit has an easy to fix gap and the clear parts fit badly(canopy can be done open)

I think it actually came out pretty well. You don't see a lot of South Vietnamese aircraft, even though it's said the VNAF was once a pretty formidable force. But they had no ECM, and this enabled the North Vietnamese to neutralize them after 1973.

Thank you. I remember reading somewhere after the involvement of the USA they actually grew to be the 6th biggest air force in the world. But the most advanced aircraft they had was F-5E as far as I know so strength in numbers is as far as SAM efficency I guess:}