AIRCRAFT: Kingfishers were rugged aircraft that flew either as floatplanes or as land-based navy aircraft with wheels, serving with the US Navy and with numerous Allied forces during World War II and for a short while afterward. Although originally designed as observation aircraft, they also handled such duties as rescue, reconnaissance, and anti-submarine missions, often operating from shipboard catapults.

KIT PARTS: The kit I built was an old boxing (check out the antique box-art) and may possibly have become slightly warped with age (as we tend to do sometimes). The parts were fairly cleanly pressed in a dark blue plastic with a minimum of flash evident. The clear parts were not overly thick and looked usable. About the time I was building this kit I also bought one of the more recent boxings from Monogram (Kit No. 5488) which comes with a small panel of photo-etched parts, so I had to decide which parts I wanted to use and in which configuration. I finally decided to build the floatplane version, using the old kit without any photo-etched bits, in a 1941 US Navy colour scheme.

The kit's two fuselage halves are moulded with the main float (in two halves) attached underneath, including some sturdy-looking cross-braces. If you want to make a wheeled version you will have to cut off the float halves and open some holes for the wheel struts. Personally, I thought the wheels and struts looked a bit clunky and toy-like, so I opted for the float.

Given the age of the kit, it is quite nicely detailed both internally and externally. The rear gunner's area can be made to look reasonably "busy", even without using the photo-etched bits. The pilot's cockpit consists of a tub with side consoles, headrest and seat with moulded-in seatbelts. Into this you place the joystick and an optional pilot (which I left off), and add an instrument panel from the decal sheet. There is also an optional legless gunner for the rear cockpit. Surface detail on the exterior is very finely done with raised lines, which do not detract at all from such a clunky-looking aircraft.

INSTRUCTIONS: What can I say about the instructions? I looked at the old instruction sheet, then I looked at the new one, then I quickly threw the old one away. It makes you wonder how anyone managed to build a decent model 30 years ago, if they followed the instructions of the time.

The newer sheet is a double-sided sheet about 28cm wide by 63.5cm long (that's 11 inches by 25.5 inches), folded several times to make it easier to handle. I have never worked out the logic of Monogram's folds, because they never coincide with any divisions in the instructions except for the "front page". Anyhow, there are 30 steps to the construction (including some optional steps for either wheels or floats), a very brief description of the aircraft, and paint/marking diagrams for three aircraft. The old kit had, from memory, a much smaller sheet with markings for two aircraft.

CONSTRUCTION: Right at the start you will have to decide which version to build, wheeled or float. Holes have to be opened in a number of locations and, for the wheeled version, the float has to be cut off. I went for the float version and proceeded to the interior construction. The old kit provides a decal for the instrument panel, while the newer kit gives you a photo-etched panel, so as I was trying for an out-of-box old kit I went for the decal and assembled all the other parts for front and rear cockpits and glued them in place. The bits that stick out in the rear gunner's area were not added at this time (ie machine gun assembly and loop antenna) to avoid knocking them off while filling and sanding etc. Basic interior colour was Zinc Chromate Green, with black instruments and radio box etc and tan seat belts. Other parts were painted as per the instructions, like the rear machine gun, gunner's seat, loop antenna, and headrest.

Now came the first of the tricky bits. The wing is made up from one bottom and two top parts after drilling out holes for the wing float mounts. It is then inserted through the right fuselage half from the inside (making sure all the cockpit parts have been glued in place) and then the left half is added and glued. Fortunately, the wing-to-fuselage join is quite good, but filler was needed on the fuselage underside and on the float, so applying and sanding the filler has to be done with the wing and a large float in the way. I was rather pleased with the way I managed to get it all together, but afterwards I noticed that, when viewed from the front, the port wing on my model is higher than the starboard. This became especially noticeable after the horizontal tail surfaces were glued on, because the tail is fairly easy to get perpendicular to the vertical tail, which means that the main wing surfaces are misaligned. Next time I build one of these I will glue on the tail halves first and then align the main wing against the tail.

The wing floats and main float dolly wheels were assembled but not yet attached. Apart from being easier to paint, leaving the wing floats till later also makes it easier to apply the underwing decals. The very basic engine was painted and the counter balances were glued on to the propeller, then the engine was glued onto the front of the cowling but the prop was left off until after painting. Now the fiddly bits from the gunner's cockpit were glued in place and the clear canopies added.

All through construction I found it essential to keep checking the instructions to make sure I drilled out all the holes necessary for the fuselage-to-float rigging, the hand holds on the floats and under the fuselage, and the boarding steps. Not all these holes can be drilled in advance, as some of them fall in the middle of join lines, but once the model is fully assembled it is no longer possible to reach all the locations.

PAINTING: None of the aircraft on the kit decal sheets particularly appealed to me, so I went looking for alternatives. The model I wanted to make was a US Navy aircraft from 1941, with red and white rudder stripes and a finish of non-specular blue-grey 603 uppersurfaces and non-spec light grey 602 undersurfaces. The one I found had very basic markings, most of which came from the spares box.

After masking off the canopies and engine front, I sprayed the entire model in the light grey undersurface colour, using Testors ModelMaster 1730 Light Gray. The light grey acted as an undercoat for the white of the rudder, which was sprayed next, although the red stripes were to be added from red decal sheet later. The top grey was ModelMaster 1723, sprayed free-hand on all upper surfaces and the tops of the main and wing floats, and also part-way up the main and wing struts. After the paint was thoroughly dry, I hand-painted the black areas on the main float, wing float struts and wing walks. The prop blades were black with red/yellow/blue tips, and the hub was polished metal. I used paint in appropriate colours for the light lenses. Beaching gear wheels etc were as per kit instructions.

VERSIONS: Actual version designations are not given in the kit instructions, but it looks to me like you can build an OS2U-1, -2 or -3 without any major difficulty. Production versions of the Kingfisher all looked very similar with only a few obvious differences. The prototype aircraft (XOS2U-1) had a differently-shaped rear canopy cutout and the original Vought-built float. Many of the early models had the Vought float but all later models had the Edo float, which was also retro-fitted to the early aircraft (the kit gives you an Edo float). Some of the OS2U-3s in US Navy service had spinners on their props, and this would be a simple addition to the model if you wanted it (one easy way is to cut the front off a bomb from the spares box and glue it over the front of the hub, with appropriate cut-outs for the prop blades).

DECALS: The decals that came in the early boxing were somewhat thick and yellowed, and I considered them unusable, except for the instrument panel. There were two aircraft on the sheet, a US Navy OS2U-3 coded White 24 and a Royal Navy aircraft whose decal roundels had overly-bright red centres.

The more recent boxing had markings for three aircraft: an anonymous Royal Navy OS2U-3; a pre-war US Navy OS2U-1 wheeled version with silver fuselage and yellow wings, coded 3-0-4 (making the unit VO-3); and a US Navy WW2 floatplane in tri-colour camouflage and a Donald Duck motif on the tail. All the decals were thick and very glossy, and I suspect they were the kind that go milky white in water so I didn't want to use them.

Instead, I got some US roundels with red centres (6 positions) from the spares box, a piece of red stripe for the main float, some red decal cut into thick strips for the tail, four sets of numbers (I used fuselage code 18) and some serial numbers for the tail.

After all the decaling was completed and dry, I added the rigging, antennae, hand-holds, steps, beaching gear, wing floats and exhausts. The model was then given a couple of top coats of varnish to provide a slightly semi-matt finish, and then it was weathered to tone down the paint on top and to show some oil stains under the cowling. I dry-brushed all the rivet detail and panel joints with toned-down silver paint.

OVERALL: I know the kit let me down in the wing alignment, but overall it looked really good when finally completed. The canopy clear parts look so good people have asked me if they were vac-formed, and the level of surface detail is as good as most modern kits. The most obvious thing that gives away the kit's age is the shallow engine moulded into the front of the cowling. But now that I've built my first one I know what to do differently in the next one, so I would certainly recommend this kit.

REFERENCES:

OS2U Kingfisher in Action (Squadron/Signal)

Boeing P-26 Variants (AeroFax Minigraph, #8)