The Grumman F8F Bearcat is one of my all-time favorite prop planes. Maybe because it never really got to prove itself in the role for which it was designed I can’t help but wonder “what if” whenever I think about it! Simple (if not especially original) in concept, the idea was to shoe-horn the biggest radial engine available at the time into the smallest, lightest possible airframe. Using the same 2,100-horsepower Pratt &Whitney R-2800 34 W as the F6F-5 Hellcat, the F8F-1 was an exceptional airframe, fast at 421 mph with an astounding rate of climb (4,570 feet-per-minute), nimble and highly maneuverable; it would undoubtedly have proven itself against the best fighters Japan had to offer in the closing days of the war; the Nakajima Ki 84 Hayate “Frank” and the Kawanishi Ki 100 Otsu. As it was, the Bearcat fell through the cracks of history, arriving just too late in WWII to fire a shot in anger. By the time it was deployed in large numbers in the late 1940s, early jet fighters were on the scene, rendering it virtually obsolete. The last Bearcat was retired from active service in 1956.

This is the old classic Monogram 1/72 F8F Bearcat kit dressed up with a bit of rudimentary scratch-building and a little selective kit bashing. I’ve wanted to build this kit ever since it first came out in 1967 (when I was 9).  Ultimately it took me forty years to get around to it, but I’m glad I waited as I was able to bring my hard-earned adult sensibilities of patience and greater attention to detail (not to mention way-better tools and modeling materials) to this essentially-nostalgic project.  

Overall accuracy of the kit is good considering its age; everything forward of the cockpit is pretty much bang-on according to prototype. Aft of the cowl there are some size and height issues (the cockpit sits a bit too low, while the tail is too tall for an F8F-1 and too short for a -2) but shape-wise it makes for a very good-looking generic Bearcat and I chose not to make any structural alterations.

I decided to do several simple things that would enhance the model’s appearance without involving major surgery or overly complicating the build (thus sapping the fun out of it); to this end I re-scribed all the raised panel lines, boxed in the wheel wells with Evergreen styrene strip, scratch-built cockpit sidewalls and borrowed the engine, instrument panel, control column and tail-hook from the recent Academy 1/72 F6F-3/5 Hellcat kit. I used decals and separate gun-bay blisters from one of two recently-acquired Sword Bearcat kits (which I will eventually get around to building as specific -1 and -2 F8Fs) and adapted a few interior parts from the Eduard PE Zoom set for the Hasegawa F4U1-D Corsair to fill out and busy-up the very basic Monogram cockpit.  

Preparing the Model

In dealing with a kit of this vintage it is absolutely essential to thoroughly clean every part in warm soapy water (I use Palmolive dish detergent) as forty years of un-removed mold-release agent, moisture and dust could potentially wreak havoc on even the most expertly-applied paint job!  Also, some of the styrene used in the ‘60s has had a tendency to become quite brittle over the decades; in the four examples of this kit that I obtained (two originals from 1967, an early-70s Monogram/Mattel issue retaining the original box art, and a Monogram Classics re-issue from 1979) the fuselage halves were molded very thinly to begin with and were virtually translucent; I had to be very careful not to bear down too hard when re-scribing. I cut off the prominent tail wheel before beginning work (as it was bound to break off during construction anyway) and reattached it when the model was complete.

To make it easier to see what I was doing while re-scribing I dry-brushed some Polly Scale gull gray over the raised panel lines. When the excess paint was wiped away the panel lines were thrown into clear relief against the dark sea blue color of the plastic and it was easy to place strips of Dymo tape exactly where I needed them. I used a sewing needle locked into a light-weight pin vise to do the scribing; in order to achieve consistency I would scribe a line on the port fuselage half and then immediately go to the corresponding line on the starboard half, always keeping the Dymo tape straight-edge on the same side of the line. For some of the odd-shaped access panels and hatches I used a Verlinden scribing template (which in retrospect was a great investment). Any errors were filled with CA (applied very precisely with a Microbrush) followed with a few drops of accelerator, and rendered invisible by light sanding with several grades of Flex-i-File tape. After re-scribing, I sanded down what remained of the raised lines (including the gun-bay blisters on the wings). The end result was fairly subtle but well worth the effort, though I must admit that re-scribing is not my favorite modeling activity!

Construction

Molded directly into the upper wing section, Monogram’s “cockpit” consists of a basic floor with a suggestion of rudder pedals, a separate seat with molded-in seatbelt and headrest/armor detail, an under-sized control stick and a hugely over-sized instrument-panel decal that doesn’t fit where (theoretically) it’s supposed to go. I decided to dress things up in this department even though any cockpit detail is nigh-on to impossible to see once the fuselage has been closed up. I built up a pair of sidewalls on either side of the seat using .250 Evergreen strip. I shaped the tops of the sidewalls to a gently-sloping inward angle and attached the control panels from the Corsair detail set after carefully painting and dry-brushing to highlight maximum raised detail. I replaced Monogram’s puny control column with the much better (to scale) Academy Hellcat stick. I trimmed the instrument panel piece from the Hellcat to shape, attached the Corsair PE panel to it and called it good!

Click on images below to see larger images

I boxed in Monogram’s non-existent wheel wells with various sizes of Evergreen .015-thick styrene strip, sanding them to match the contour of the inner wing. I wasn’t completely satisfied with my work, especially along the inside of the leading edges, but decided that this was one mostly-hidden detail I didn’t really need to sweat. I did go ahead and insert a couple small pieces of styrene strip to serve as splitters in the leading-edge oil-cooler outlets.

The Monogram kit comes with a very nice-looking R-2800 engine front, albeit a bit under-sized and lacking the kind of crispness in detail that modelers tend to take for granted nowadays. I decided instead to adapt the beautifully-rendered engine from the Academy Hellcat, which required only minimal trimming to fit into the Bearcat fuselage. I sanded off the front of the Monogram engine plate, and thinned down the back of the Academy engine before mating the two together, removing and re-positioning the plastic mounting lugs a little further back on the inside of the fuselage, and finally installing the “hybrid” engine plate. The Monogram prop mated quite easily to the Academy hub and I was generally quite pleased with the results after painting.

Painting and Decaling

I used Polly Scale US Interior Green for the cockpit and fuselage interior. The Eduard PE instrument panels were painted with Polly Scale Engine black and then carefully dry-brushed with PS Reefer White. The entire exterior, top and underside, was airbrushed with PS US Navy Sea Blue followed by two light coats of PS Clear Gloss before and after applying the decals.  I used decals from the superb Sword 1/72 F8F-1/2 kit, markings for an F8F-2 of VF-151 operating from the USS Boxer (CV 21) in the late 1940s, though I did not try to recreate this scheme with complete accuracy. (It is quite obvious that these decals are a bit over-sized for the Monogram kit, but I didn’t have a serviceable set of Monogram decals on hand. If given a choice I tend to prefer a less-accurate-but-clean build over a sloppy or amateurish attempt at total accuracy). Stars and Bars came from a spare Carpena sheet. Citadel Mithril Silver was used for highlights on the wheels, landing gears, tail wheel and the tail hook from the Academy Hellcat.

This was a fun and rewarding project, a chance to indulge in a bit of childhood nostalgia while practicing some of the skills I’ve picked up as an adult, and ultimately reminding myself of why I’ve always loved building models and why I always will!

Cheers

Jerry (Old Blind Dog)