Puttering in the Study

F4U-1D Corsair - 1/72 scale

Parker and I have gotten into watching the old episodes of Baa Baa Black Sheep, and when he found an incomplete 1/72 Corsair kit in Grayson's room (a very nice 2009 Hobby Boss I later realized) he finished it while sitting on the couch watching the show.  The problem was that the kit was missing the engine, cowling, and propellor.  So when I was in Dallas a couple of weeks ago I picked up the cheapest Corsair kit I found, which was an old (1979) Matchbox kit, intending to use it for spares.

Incidentally, I've never built a Corsair.  I remember getting the BBBS kit shown above, but not finishing it, and I have no idea what happened to it.  So it's nice working on it, but compared to the 1/32 aircraft I had in 1976 or 1977, this thing is tiny!

Unfortunately, the Matchbox kit didn't have a separate cowling, and it was a postwar model with a four bladed propellor.  So we decided to build the Matchbox as an overall Sea Blue (late war) F4U with the Bunker Hill markings that came with the Hobby Boss kit (since as the screen shot shows, one of the Black Sheep Corsairs had the Bunker Hill arrow on its wing).  I also used the Hobby Boss split canopy so I could show the plane with the canopy pushed back.

The markings are for the F4U-1D flown by Lt. (jg) William L. Gerner of VF-84, flying from the U.S.S. Bunker Hill (CV-17) on February 25, 1945, when he scored three kills.  Coincidentally, Gerner was from Dallas, Texas man and studied at Texas A&M before entering the Navy. He was aboard the Bunker Hill with VB-17 for eight months, and came to VF-84 via VB-84. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flight as Section Leader of a group of planes in VF-8 over Tokyo, on 25 February 1945.  So it's fitting that this model from Dallas was finished as the aircraft of a Dallas native. 

The Bunker Hill's Corsairs sometimes have yellow cowlings and sometimes don't, but Parker opted to include one.  (I didn't include the white markings on the fuselage - they are tape that covers the seams in the fuselage to keep aviation fuel or oil from leaking out and onto the pilot's windscreen).

This kit is sort of a warm up, as I have gotten a state of the art Tamiya F4U-1 with markings for Pappy Boyington's aircraft (at least the one that was photographed as his, even though records indicate he never flew that specific aircraft in combat) and will trying to model it with a weathered three-color camouflage circa late 1943.  Weathering something I have not attempted with my 1/72 aircraft yet.

Midnight in the Pacific: Guadalcanal - The World War II Battle That Turned the Tide of War - Joseph Wheelan

This was one of the more interesting accounts I've read of the Guadalcanal campaign.  It tells stories I wasn't familiar with, and makes clear how close the Marines were to losing control of the airfield at several points, and what incredible feats of not just courage and bravery, but preparation and training allowed them to prevail.  But even with that, had the Japanese been just slightly less awful in their tactics, they couldn't have helped but succeed, although success would have meant little given the cost.  As it ended up, they failed, but the failure to hold the island wasn't the major effect of Guadalcanal - it was that Japan has irreplaceable assets in planes, pilots, troops, and to a lesser extent, ships.  (It could afford to lose two battleships - they were effectively useless anyway, as they weren't worth the air cover they would have required to operate).

Guadalcanal was the first engagement in the long campaign of attrition that would see the Japanese Navy sidelined for the next year and a half.  It essentially ended its ability to wage carrier warfare, since it would never again be able to launch an attack by carrier planes that seriously threatened American capital ships or military movements, although this wouldn't be clear until after the Leyte Gulf campaign in October 1944. 

The book (I listened to the audiobook) has some very slight errors when dealing with naval matters, but no significant ones.  And it avoids the common postwar attacks on Admiral's Fletcher's actions in the campaign in favor of a more practical analysis that underscores just how inadequate the U.S. campaign was in terms of resources of men and material at this stage in the war.  The Guadalcanal campaign was competing for resources with the upcoming Torch invasion of North Africa, and while it got the last dregs of the prewar U.S. carrier fleet, it was short on every other ship type as well - until almost too late.  Halsey finally threw every asset he had into the restricted waters around the island to try to preserve the air striking power of Henderson Field by protected it from naval bombardment at a crucial point, and the radar-equipped battleship Washington won the day.  Significantly, while the U.S. had a second new, fast battleship in the battle, the South Dakota, it suffered electrical outages that rendered it a punching bag for the Japanese while the Washington took out the Japanese battleship Kirishima.  (Note how low the main guns are elevated in the photo from the battle to the right - the ships were at effectively point blank range).

Overall, a good book, and a good addition to the corpus on this campaign.  But it does make me want to go back and read Robert Leckie's book, and Richard Frank's.

Alone: Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk: Defeat Into Victory - Michael Korda

This was an interesting book, to say the least.  Korda tells the story of, essentially, Dunkirk, but includes his perspective as a ten year boy, son of a movie industry family, which provides a fascinating perspective on what happened.  He remember's Chamberlain's speeches on the radio, of praying nightly for the BEF in France, and many other things that he only later learned the significance of.  Probably not the best account out there, but an interesting one, and likely the last we'll see from someone who remembers any part of it firsthand.