Madoc.us: The Monogram F8F Bearcat

The F8F Bearcat

This was one helluva fighter in its day. Fast, agile and like a rocket in its climbing. The Bearcat was everything the US Navy could've wanted in a carrier based interceptor, circa 1945.

A bit of history here. By 1944, the war in the Pacific had changed. It was no longer like the dark days at the start of the war when the US Navy had to face the massive Japanese attacks with but a few highly trained naval aviators. On December 7th, 1941, the US Navy was a small, peacetime force. It had just a few carriers with just a few, relatively, pilots to fly the planes aboard. As far as fighter aircraft went, what was best for this environment was a plane which was optimized for performance. Something which would not limit the pilots who flew it. This was acceptable for the Naval Aviation of the day as that small cadre of pilots was highly trained and quite capable of dealing with the Wildcat's demanding nature. Then came Pearl and suddenly world changed. To stem the Japanese tide and then reverse it, the US Navy would need a lot more than its small, peacetime force.

The answer was to ramp up as fast as possible and churn out as many ships, subs, planes and pilots as possible. This was a "mass market" approach that required a "mass market" aircraft. That meant a plane that gave its pilots an advantage over the Japanese foes he'd face while at the same time still being forgiving enough that these newly minted pilots could handle it. In this, the Grumman F6F Hellcat was tailor made. It was faster than the Zero, something which the Wildcat wasn't, and was a much easier aircraft to operate than the Wildcat. Thus the Hellcat was exactly the plane that was needed at the moment. With the right tactics, it held an advantage over the Japanese aircraft and did so even in the hands of the new and inexperienced pilots being churned out by all those new flight schools the Navy had set up. And so, as planned, all those newly minted naval pilots were soon climbing into all those newly produced Hellcats and together with the old hands who flew their Wildcats, the US Navy was able to stem the tide in the Pacific and then reverse it. Thus, by 1944, the Navy found itself in a position where it could move beyond the pressing needs for a mass market approach. Thus it could once again field an aircraft which would not limit the pilots who flew it. Thus the contract for the Bearcat.

The Bearcat was optimized for performance and was therefore perfect for all those US Navy pilots who now had enough combat flight time to have outgrown the limits of the previous world beater from the Iron Works (as Grumman came to be called) the Hellcat. Now with thousands of pilots who had hundreds of hours of combat flight time - and not just the bare "200 hours in a trainer and you get your wings!" as they did previously, the higher performing and more demanding Bearcat was a perfect match.

Benefiting from having examined freshly captured German Focke Wulf FW190's, Grumman engineers had set themselves to the task of designing as small and lightweight and aircraft as they could squeeze behind the well proven and reliable Pratt & Whitney R-2800-30W Engine. That is a twin-row 18 cylinder air-cooled radial that can generate 2,250 hp for takeoff and that was enough horses to yield the Bearcat a max speed of 455 mph @ 28,000. This was also enough to rocket the Bearcat up into those skies at 6,300 feet per minute. That was just the thing you'd want in an interceptor that had to scramble off the carrier deck to defend the fleet.

As a result of Grumman's efforts the Bearcat was very compact. It was but twenty seven and a half feet long and only thirty five and a half feet wide. That's actually a bit smaller than a Mustang and definitely smaller than a Jug. The designers at the Iron Works achieved all this at some expense in range. There simply wasn't the extra space inside the minimized design to stuff any extra fuel tanks. So, the Bearcat had tankage for but 185 gallons internally and that yielded a range of 865 miles. Shackling on that big centerline tank, at 150 gallons, almost doubled that range, bringing it to 1,435 miles. As you might guess, it was rare indeed when the Bearcat went out on operations without that centerline tank.

As good as the Bearcat was, it got out of the Iron Works doors just a shade too late to see combat service in World War Two. The Navy issued Grumman the contract for this high powered interceptor November of '43. Grumman had a prototype ready for flight testing a mere nine months later. Typical of those guys out there on Long Island. Also typical for Grumman, the Bearcat was rolling out the factory doors just six months after that first flight. That put the F8F into the hands of the Navy's training development squadrons in February of 1945 and into the first line squadron, VF-19, in May of '45. VF-19 was still familiarizing itself with its new mount and had yet to deploy to the Pacific theater when the war ended in August of that year. Thus, the Bearcat became another of those "could've beens" in US aviation history.

Still though, the Bearcat was fast, was maneuverable, and could climb like nothing else. At least nothing else then in US Navy service. The scream of turbines and the smell of JP-4 soon rendered even the Bearcat's excellent performance obsolete. The huge production contracts the Navy had drawn up for the F8F were all downsized (from over 2,500 to just 1,266 for Grumman) or canceled outright (all of the birds GM was to have produced.) Although twenty four US Navy squadrons did operate the Bearcat through the mid to late 40's, their days were numbered in US service. It was another Iron Works product, the F9F Panther, which pushed the Bearcat out of its active US service. So it was that the Panther jet was the "Navy Sea Blue" bird over Korea and not the Bearcat.

All was not over for the F8F however. While the US was wealthy enough to afford the latest and greatest in military technology, there were plenty of other countries in the world who had the need but hadn't the budget to afford those new fangled jets. And when those countries were trying to fight off Communist insurgents the US was quite happy to supply them with weapons it no longer had a use for. Thus the Bearcat found new life in foreign service. Among the nations which wound up using the stout and powerful fighter were the French and the Thai air forces. The Bearcat became the primary close support aircraft the French used in trying to retain their grasp of their Indochina colony. And it was destruction of so many of them - on the ground - by the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu which heralded the French defeat there and their eventual loss of that colony.

The Bearcat was too good a plane to be knocked down by any French loss and it remained a frontline fighter-bomber throughout the 50's with the Thais and with other air forces. Eventually though, jets and age caught up with most of those aircraft. In the 60's, with the rebirth of unlimited air racing, the Bearcat found new life again. Here the Bearcat was in its element. These races are short high speed affairs just the place for an interceptor plane which was long on speed but short on legs.

Soon there were quite a few Bearcats tearing it up over the desert out there in Reno each year. And also soon enough there were racers who began extensively modifying their mounts and tweaking its engine to squeeze even more power from an already powerful beast. The results are still airborne today and have set several airspeed records over the years.

Not all the remaining Bearcats are only flying at Reno. Several of these famous planes are in the hands of private owners who keep them operational so they can prowl the airshow circuit. The purr of that big Pratt & Whitney is a distinctive and roaring thing to hear.

Even on the ground the Bearcat's long landing gear, necessitated by its huge diameter prop, and blunt nose, necessitate by that radial engine, give the plane a distinctive and powerful appearance. The plane just looks strong and its actual performance - even today more than a half century since it first took flight - lives up to its looks.

Well, that's a bit of the Bearcat's history. As such, you can see why it'd be a great subject for companies to make model kits of. The plane has a good history, a long and varied service record, is still flying today, and besides, the damn thing looks pretty cool to boot! Thus it came to be that Monogram Models Inc. issued a kit of Bearcat back in '67. This, along with similar kits of a P-51B and a P-36A Hawk. For their day, these were really sweet kits. They were simple but pretty accurate and were well thought out in their design. Just the thing for the market at the time. Even today, almost four decades later, these kits hold up very well. The Monogram Bearcat kit is still good rendering of this plane in 1/72nd scale. I know that Frog produced a Bearcat kit as the plane's long French service meant it was well known over there. I've not seen the Frog kit but, given its vintage and given the general quality of other Frog kits from that era, I'm pretty sure the Monogram rendering has it beat hands down. I've not seen the Sword version of this plane but I suspect that it reflects a more modern production standards and detailing as it is in current production. Monogram has long since ceased production of this kit. It has, however, re-released it in 1979 and in 1989. That most recent release being under its "Mini Masterpieces" series.

First things first, this kit got a bath. Once dry I set to the testing the fit of the kit's major pieces. Learning from my mistakes with the Airfix F-80 kit, I closely examined how the fuselage looked. Luckily, there was no warping of the plastic here as there'd been with that kit.

One thing that I decided early on to do differently with this kit was to "open it up" by animating it's control surfaces. The kit was molded with the flaps, rudder, elevator and ailerons all in the neutral or closed position. That simplifies the molding process and does produce a very clean looking model. However, the real world aircraft was rarely in such a state. So, in short order I had carved through the plastic enough to separate the flaps from the wings and the rudder from the fuselage halves. I also wanted to open up the engine cowl flaps. That took a bit more work but I did that as well as separating the elevator from the horizontal stabilizer. I even carved the inside of the aileron's hinge points such that I could flex them out of their neutral position. All this was probably the single most time consuming part of this kit's assembly. There's nothing terribly special in doing this, just taking care to not carve any other part of the kit that shouldn't be carved. I used a regular X-Acto knife for this but I worked it in reverse by pulling it through the part against its tip and not against its blade point. This meant the blade would tend to carve the plastic away more than just cut through it. I also used a panel scribing tool (both the Tamiya and versions) when I could. All three tools were effective.

Once I got through that I decided I needed to do something about the kit's lack of any interior detailing. This was most glaring in the kit's treatment of the wheel wells. Simply put, there was nothing there but the attachment points for the landing gear struts. Mind you, I was glad for such prominent and effective attachment points as that made the gear assembly and positioning much easier and effective then what I found with the Airfix F-80 kit. Still though, the whole area looked naked as all get out. I especially didn't like how open the whole thing was. The wheel wells were devoid of detail and they also were not boxed in at all. So, you could see into the rest of the wing and also see right through the fuselage via the wheel well openings. That was hardly realistic.

The simple answer would be to just box those wells in with plastic card. I tried that but found I was rather fumble fingered getting the pieces trimmed properly. I then thought of making a template for the plastic card by using putty or clay to establish the correct profile. At first I used some Silly Putty®. I simply placed a bit of the putty in the area where I wanted to get the shape from and then squeezed the wings together until they fit properly. Unfortunately, the Silly Putty® was too flexible and the profile it yielded once I pulled it up from where I stuck it turned out to be useless. I tried the same with some Plasticine (modeling clay) and this certainly was an improvement over the Silly Putty®. However, it wasn't enough of an improvement. So, I decided the simplest way I could "box in" the wheel wells was buy puttying them closed. Out came my tube of Testors modeling putty. This was rather gooey and too liquidy to smooth very well. While I used it to do the initial filling in, I switched over to Tamiya modeling putty to finish things off. Even with the Tamiya putty, this was still a rather slow way of doing things. I would smear as much putty as I could into the gap and then have to sit back to let it set up. Then it'd be time to smear more into the gaps and then let that set up. Finally, I'd have enough of a contiguous surface to apply the Tamiya putty onto and then smooth that out. Along the way though, I did use some small strips of plastic card to "box in" the wing root air scoops. I would like to have detailed those further but I just didn't have sufficient references to do that with. The pictures of the Bearcat that I've found online are all well and good but they don't show the details of the landing gear bays. In the end, I simply put those plastic strips into the right area, placed a bit of kit sprue behind them (so as to "suggest" the air ducting) and then smoothed the gaps with more putty. No, it's not to scale and it's not accurate. However, it's a lot better than nothing.

At about this time I also decided to do something of the kit's cockpit - or more accurately, its lack of a cockpit. As issued, the kit came with a cockpit seat, a control stick, a instrument panel on the decal sheet, and some bumps molded into the wing's upper surface which one could take as perhaps being rudder pedals. Unlike more modern kits - and even unlike that Airfix F-80 kit - there was no separate cockpit "tub" into which you could pour your detailing efforts. Instead, the cockpit detail would have to sit atop the upper wing piece and then the two fuselage pieces would come together around it.

As basic as all this was, the cockpit seat did at least feature molded in seatbelts and was rather finely molded. Since the seat would wind up being the most prominent feature of the model's cockpit, this was a good thing. Even though the Bearcat's cockpit is a small and tight affair, reflecting how the actual aircraft is a small and tight machine, I figured that the basic level of detail was too basic. So, I decided to do something about that. I couldn't readily box this one in as its assembly was too open. With most other kits, the cockpit is a subassembly that attaches to one side of the fuselage and that lends itself to more detailing. With the cockpit pieces simply sitting out in the open on top of the wing, this would harder to do. I thought about using more Plasticine to establish the profile of the area I had to work with but decided just to simplify thing by keeping it simple. To that end, I cut out two pieces from a rather thick sheet of plastic sheet and superglued those on to either side of the cockpit seat. I used the thicker stock so as to provide a simple level surface for the superglue. Thinner stock might have required bracing or more futzing. I also wanted a wider surface upon which I'd then glue the thin strips which would serve as the cockpit console panels. Here's what resulted:

After about ten or eleven days of work, at an hour or two a day, here's what I had on my hands: