The rest of this batch is all US Navy, beginning with the Mach 2 1/72 kit of the Douglas A2D. This is not a kit to be taken lightly, a fairly decent model can be made from it if you’ve been around the block a few times with challenging limited run injection kits but even then this will test a modellers basic skills severely. I might not have ever got around to making this had I not been overcome with the need to make US Navy aircraft in the Dark Sea Blue colour scheme, and the A2D was manufactured during the period when that scheme was in use. I’m glad that I made it but, to be honest, I’ve made much better models than this one. Do better if you can.
That period immediately after World War II was a period of transition from piston to jet powered aircraft and many weird and wonderful ideas were tried and then dropped out of favour. The A2D, another was the Convair XP5Y flying boat. It used the same turboprop engines as the A2D and the failure of that engine doomed both the A2D and the XP5Y to oblivion even though other factors contributed. Still, the big flying boat is a fine looking aircraft and it is a good thing that Aingrand offer the kit in resin in 1/144. This is a fairly simple kit to make so long as you proceed carefully, the most serious problems is that the propeller blades tend to fall off their spinners if you don’t look at them right and most of the ones here have been reattached using some thin craft wire. Once again the SMS Dark Sea Blue takes a prominent role in finishing this model and making it look so good.
The Anigrand XP5Y 1/144 kit comes with three bonus kits in the box AA-4051. They are little ones in comparison but it is interesting to compare these models with something like the Airbus A.320 in the same scale to see how large the Airbus is or, of course, how small these aircraft were. These kits are very simple in comparison to some of the highly detailed kits now becoming available in 1/144, but they are adequate for this scale.
Douglas A2D-1. It is a bit weird making the same aircraft in two scales at the same time. This one was much easier to put together but it is also lacking a lot of detail.
Douglas F3D-2. A change to the Dark Sea Blue scheme which was superceded by the US Navy’s Light Gull Grey and White scheme in the mid 1950s. The F3D was the only successful aircraft out of this month’s US Navy batch.
Convair YF2Y-1. What’s not to like about a Convair delta, even if the idea of a supersonic jet fighter flying boat didn’t work out.
