1/48 Hasegawa F6F-5 Hellcat 

Blue Angels 

by Jeff Thomsen

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Here's my 1/48 Hasegawa Hellcat done in Blue Angel markings. Team leader Roy "Butch" Voris (who passed away just last year) formed the team in 1946 operating war surplus Grumman F6F-5 Hellcats for a very brief period before transitioning to the Grumman Bearcat. The aircraft were painted standard Gloss Dark Sea Blue but featured the titling in gold leaf. This scheme would change with the Bearcats, becoming a lighter blue with deep yellow titles, as well as repeating "US NAVY" underneath each wing.

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I used the excellent Hasegawa F6F-5K Target Towplane kit as the basis for my model, with a few mods which were largely guesswork, since there isn't much info available on these aircraft. I filled in the leading edge machine gun holes and ejector chutes on the wing, used a Black Box cockpit but left off the gunsight, and replaced the cowl with one from Cutting Edge. I also replaced the sliding portion of the canopy with a vacformed one from Squadron, and added new True Details tires to top things off.

Paint was Model Master Gloss Dark Sea Blue polished between coats. I wanted to model Voris' aircraft (#1) and ended up drawing decals with Adobe Illustrator and having them ALPS printed by Draw Decal (which now offers them in any scale:  drawdecal.com) in a very nice metallic gold. Hasegawa recently released a Blue Angels Hellcat kit but unfortunately got the markings wrong and did them in yellow (oops!). I chose to do a minimum of weathering - merely adding a very faint exhaust stain above the wing. While not as flashy as the Blues' later aircraft, Voris' glossy #1 is an appealing piece of aviation history.

Jeff 

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Photos and text © by Jeff Thomsen