1/48 Italeri Douglass SBD-5 Dauntless

Gallery Article by Laurent ‘Angus’ Beauvais on Jan 22 2009

 

French navy, Escadrille 4F, Indochine 1947

Back with my favorite theme: Non French aircraft with French markings, with this legendary Slow But Deadly Navy dive bomber. The Italeri kit is a re-issue of the Classic Airframes kit, which is a very good kit except the airbrakes that are too small.

For French readers, you can read this in French on the Fighter forum here: http://fighters.forumactif.com/vos-montages-avions-helicos-f2/italeri-sbd-5-dauntless-t30138.htm

For all the others, so the vast majority here, happy to share with you these mounting steps.

I think the content of this kit is well known and has been repetitively shown, just one remark: the instruction sheet of the classic airframe kit is much better, you can find it on the net here: http://www.accurate-miniatures.com/instructions/SBD-5_3412.pdf

01: Few thinks added in the cockpit which looks quite full, just some few cables.

02: Seat has been fined.

03: Cockpit is painted and weathered in a very classic way: interior green + juice + white drybrush. I took benefit of that time to cut rear stabilizers and position them to give some life to the kit.

04: seats belts are furnished as decals. I did put them on aluminum tape and then cut them.

Click on images below to see larger images

  

  

  

06: Rear cockpit has been scratched to obtain the correct equipment. I did not use the instruments decals and preferred to paint them

07: Nothing to do on the engine except paint it

08: Some few details added in the wheel bay. Note also that the radius is too small, I did correct it using putty.

09: Guns: I did replace the extremities by electric wire. I did not used the kit part for the oil radiator to create my own with a piece of curtain tissue

10: Putty was used and smoothed with acetone.

11: At this stage the kit is quite completely build and hand painted with Humbrol 11 aluminium for future weathering. Rear machine gun have been a little bit enhanced with their visors.

12-13: But at this stage I decided to create all the rivets on the airplane which are quite visible as you can see on this picture: http://www.airliners.net/photo/France---Navy/Douglas-SBD-5-Dauntless/0784659/L/

14: Then paint process is classic: First brush black paint on the structure lines

15: Bottom is painted in flat white

16: Upper surfaces in Humbrol 144 and Tamiya X3  

17: For upper surfaces, I did continue the weathering using pastel powder: on the left zone, not applied, in the center zone, during application, in the right zone, once cleaned.

18: Then I scrapped the paint to show the Humbrol 11

19: A dark juice is applied on the intrados : left zone: finished, center zone: not applied, right zone: during application

20: same thing on the intermediate blue 

21: Whereas a light grey juice is applied on the dark blue painted zones.

22: Intrados surfaces are weathered with a brown color. I have a picture of a French Dauntless which central intrados zone is quite black.

23: Exhaust traces are usually soft on Dauntless, I did them using Tamiya smoke. The same photo in black and white, in real, I did paint 3 times the exhaust traces before arriving to a result that did satisfied me, the black and white photo allowing me to make a comparison.

24: Real wheel is to be scratched, the one of the kit is not correct for this type. Extrado airbrakes are really too short, perform the modification before painting if possible.  

This is it, a last flat varnish and this typical Slow But Deadly aircraft is complete.

Hope you enjoy, and as I send this mail to Steve on Dec. 24th, with a little bit of delay, happy Christmas and happy new year to all of you.

Laurent ‘Angus’ Beauvais

Click on images below to see larger images

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

Photos and text © by Laurent ‘Angus’ Beauvais