Part I.
Winter 1940-41: Farewell to Golden Wings

In January 1941 USS Lexington (CV-2) was home to an air group that reflected both the advances in aviation technology since her commissioning in 1927 and the doctrinal debates within the navy as to how to best use airpower afloat. The picture dates from 1935 but is reflective of how the ship appeared in late December 1940. The ship itself was largely unchanged since construction, except for the widened flight deck forward. Lexington and her sister Saratoga were by far the largest carriers of the day and gave experience in the operation of large numbers of airplanes. Because they were built in advance of any substantive aircraft carrier experience, they were the proving ground for both carrier aircraft and aircraft carrier technology. Lexington would be sunk in the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942, after a busy five months of war.

Lexington’s air group was a mixture of the new and not so new and reflected the final pre-war evolution of how the USN thought it would fight a war at sea against a similarly equipped opponent (Japan, i.e.). Fighters to protect the carrier and escort bomber strikes, scouts to find and fix the targets, and bombers to destroy the hostile flight decks. The SBD-2 had replaced the SB2U and would shortly replace the other scout bomber in the air group. It and the F2A-2 were as good as anything else afloat at the time. The SBC-4 was a good, sturdy airplane but could not achieve the characteristics long wanted for the scout bomber type, that of carrying a 500 lb bomb out to a scouting radius of 200 miles. The TBD was good at all its tasks, but it was simply too slow when loaded. None of them yet possessed armor or self-sealing tanks. The Wright R-1820 Cyclone engine powered three of the four. And of course, all of them were in the pre-war Golden Wings scheme.

I first read about the recovery of this airplane from Lake Michigan several years ago, and have had the opportunity to see it in the Pensacola Museum. Surely it is the only surviving Golden Wings airplane with the original orange-yellow paint sprayed on 63 years ago. The –2 finally met the 200 mile requirement; in 1955 terms it was ‘heavy attack.’  Delivered on December 28, 1940 at the Douglas El Segundo plant, 2106 was accepted by the navy the same day and ferried to NAS North Island. There it was assigned to VB-2 in whose colors it had been painted during construction. 2106 would remain with VB-2 and Lexington for over a year. The vestiges of the original Orange-Yellow wing, the Lemon Yellow tail, and the first rendition of “2106” are visible in these photos.

Photos courtesy LCDR Jennifer Lyons USN

This particular ‘Buff version was as close as the west came to building a Zero:

Neither had any sort of passive protection. USN sources generally consider the –2 to be the best of the Brewster fighters (Boyington said it could “turn inside a phone booth”). By contrast the export version traded performance for passive protection, as did the navy –3. BuNo 1516 was built in VF-2 markings and got to VF-2 in October 1940, remaining with the squadron until replaced by the F2A-3 in September 1941. Note the 200 gal of fuel inside a 6000 lb loaded airframe. This was 70 gal more than the P-40 and over twice as much as carried by Spitfire, Hurricane and Bf-109 contemporaries. It was overhauled in December 1941, served briefly with VMF-111 and 121 and was stricken in October 1942 at NAS Miami. While with VF-2 its Brewster ancestor, the F2A-1 dressed in Finnish markings, was on the way to setting several unmatched WW II fighter records. Mustang, Spitfire and Dora aficionados?  Eat your hearts out.

29 different F2A-2s were assigned to VF –2 at one time or another. I can find only one photo of a Golden Wings VF-2 F2A-2 (BuNo 1412), other than what is factory publicity shot possibly of 2-F-1. There is one other photo of an ex-VF-2 bird in July 1942. This photo shows BuNo 1412. Note the target “can” on the port bomb rack.

The last fighting biplane to be built in the US, and the last in a line of biplane dive-bombers from Curtiss. The –4 was an engine upgrade to the –3 and could now carry and deliver a 1000 lb bomb. It was apparently well regarded in service. VS-2 got the first production versions. BuNo 1269 was the second SBC-4 delivered, most likely in May 1939 and was displayed at the 1939 New York World’s Fair marked as “2-S-1.”  It began service with VS-2 in October 1940; it was marked “2-S-12” and “2-S-13” during its time with the squadron. I have chosen the section leader colors for the model. No in-service VS-2 photos show the exhaust fairings prominent in this picture, so the model lacks them as well.

 
Courtesy of Squadron/Signal Publications

The SBC-4 was a heartbeat away from diving on Japanese carriers. Other than range and perhaps an inability to operate a two-gun rear defense, it was a fair equal to the Sainted SBD and would have done as well as a bomber I think, had it found a target.

The Mk XIII aerial torpedo and the Norden Mk XV bombsight defined this aircraft. The sight was in use when the navy issued a Request For Proposal for what would become the TBD in 1934, and the torpedo was in development. For its day, the TBD was perhaps the most sophisticated aircraft operating off carriers. BuNo 0300 was photographed on the Douglas production line in VT-2 colors in January 1938, probably being delivered that month. BuNo 0300 apparently remained with VT-2 for its entire service life and went down with Lexington when the carrier was sunk in May 1942. The two rest together to this day.

The photo shows 0300 leading VT-2 about the time represented by this article.
 

The Accurate Miniatures SBD-3 kit. The –3 and the –2 are virtually identical, at least externally. This kit was built OOB as I interpreted how it looked as it rolled out of final assembly at El Segundo. I omitted the .30 cal flex gun as Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) that would be installed by the end user (VB-2). I’ve built three out of five models of BuNo 2106 reflecting how it looked from delivery to Midway, including one Hasegawa kit. This latter should have been the golden wings version, since it has the underwing fairing that would have been installed on a delivered aircraft but hardly ever seen in service. The A/M kit as we know, is simply superb.

The Tamiya kit is the only game in town in this scale. It is almost OOB, except for some True Detail P/E. Given the closed canopy, I really shouldn’t have bothered with the P/E. Eduard provides a delightful D/F antenna to wrap around the life raft; regrettably neither the kit nor the Falcon canopy can be installed with it in place, so it’s not. As with all VF-2 Brewsters, BuNo 1516 does not have the antenna mast, the aerial being led instead to a stub on the port wing.

The Classic Airframes kit. I suppose we would call this Curtiss ‘Bipe a Second Generation CA kit: things are coming along nicely, with room for improvement. I got the kit second-hand from that marvelous underground hobby shop that used to be on 31st in NYC not far from Penn Station. I say “underground” because as those of you who have been there recall, there always seemed to be some alternative chemically related lifestyle things going on in the building. The first kit owner had started construction and given up, but everything was there except the kit bomb and bomb fins.

Tom Cleaver’s build review of this kit was of substantial aid during construction. See it at http://www.squadron.com/old/sbc4/sbc4review.htm for more construction detail.

Fuselage

The cockpit is a typical mixture of P/E, resin and injection parts and as near as I can tell represents the prototype quite well. There is of course some grinding and fitting to get the internal bulkheads to a point where the fuselage halves will join without much of a gap, and after a while some of the P/E just didn’t look as important as it did at first. Curtiss was not Douglas, so the flex gun installation is different, but it is quite nicely represented; I resisted the temptation to lower the turtleback, but the gun cannot be deployed without the deck being collapsed. So, it’s displayed in its vertical stowed position, off the gun mount at the rear of the gunner’s cockpit. The kit canopy evolved from all-closed-up (doesn’t fit the model, regrettably), passing through all-opened-up (d/f loop, even a smaller replacement, does not fit) to cut-apart sections being closed back up again for the gunner.

Like all its “SB-“ brethren the SBC-4 was equipped with a powerful MF radio for long range reporting of what it had found out there at the end of its search radius. I added in the port wing root a representation of the hollow tube through which passed the trailing wire antenna used with this radio, and the lead weight at the end of antenna drawn up flush against the lower end of the tube. The reel for the antenna wire was added to the port side of the radio-gunner’s cockpit. None of the photos of SBC-3/4 aircraft available to me show them carrying bombs in Golden Wings livery, so I installed a drop tank in the bomb crutch.

Wings

Wing bomb racks were a common SBC-4 feature. The kit lacks them, so I added them from the F2A kit, where they were not used. The wing strutery is acceptable for this sort of low-volume kit, but benefits from wire reinforcements. Bit of wire were inserted in holes drilled in the struts at the fuselage and wing ends, fitting into similar holes at the fuselage/wing locating points. The landing light was given shape with some Krystal Klear. The kit P/E antenna posts on the upper wing looked fragile, so wire is used there as well.

Another Monogram veteran and still the only kit of this aircraft in this scale. Folded wings, Falcon canopy(s) and Eduard P/E. IMHO this kit had stood up well in the quarter-century since it was released; we are unlikely to see a replacement in this scale and at this price. Those who continue to buy and build Monogram P-47s rather than Tamiya P-47s know what I mean. The P/E in this case was worth the effort, what with all that acerage of open canopy glass to see through. EZ Masks relieved the tedium of painting all those canopy strips. No torpedo; peacetime photos hardly ever show them. But this will change when 0300 is painted blue-gray.

The “Golden Wing” era had its own rules, many of which have puzzled modelers for years. Fortunately, there was very little artistic license allowed among aviation activities required to conform to directives, and we have a good deal of photographic documentation.

By directive, the golden wings officially disappeared on December 31, 1940 but as anyone who has watched “Dive Bomber” knows it took some months to fully implement the replacement scheme. Thus in January 1941 for all the aircraft addressed, the exterior coloration was:

Aluminum-pigmented lacquer overall, except the tops of the wings (upper wing for biplanes) Testors Non-Buffing Aluminum Metalizer used on all the metal surfaces except the ‘Buff (Floquil Old Silver), under Testors Metalizer Sealer. For the fabric surfaces so painted I used Old Silver under a coat of Future. The Wings were painted Polyscale Orange-Yellow, wrapping around the leading edge.

The 1937 reorganization of squadrons had, inter alia, standardized color markings for each carrier, such color being applied to all the tail surfaces. Lexington’s color was Lemon Yellow, a paler shade than Orange-Yellow. Testors Model Master Blue Angel Yellow was used for this color. Each squadron was numbered per the hull number of its parent carrier.

Each model reflects a different section (and section color) of the nominal six sections in an 18 aircraft squadron. BuNo 0300 and 2106 are in the first section of their squadrons and their cowl, wing chevron and fuselage stripes (0300) are Insignia Red. BuNo 1269 has Willow Green in the same positions; its wing chevron is reversed, as was the VS-2 custom. BuNo 1416 uses Black for its section markings.

SBD-2 Kit decals for the national insignia. All of the various numbers came from aftermarket sheets. The VB-2 Bellerophon and Pegasus originated from the kit decals of a Hasegawa 1/32 BF2C, copied, scaled down and printed out on clear decal stock (looks better from a distance)

F2A-2 Kit decals used, with the various kit numbers “juggled” about to provide the correct BuNo and section numbers for this particular aircraft.

SBC-4 Kit national insignia. All the letters and numbers created in Publisher and printed on clear decal stock. Black borders for the green section stripes was taken from the kit decal sheet of an AM F3F-2. Had a time doing the VS-2 Indian Head. I had long ago used the Microscale version of this insignia on a 1/72 model; the 1/48 version out of the old Aurora kit is inaccurate. I found a website that does USN squadron patches and retrieved one of the several Indian Head versions from it. Fiddled with it in Photoshop and printed it on clear stock. It is better than nothing, but only just.

TBD-1 Kit decals used throughout

a.                   Adcock, A. ((1989). TBD Devastator in action. Carrollton, Tx: Squadron/Signal Publications.

b.                  Cressman, R.J. (July-August 1994). Dauntless in War: Douglas SBD-2 BuNo 2106. Naval Aviation News, 24-26

c.                   Doll, T.E. ((1995). SBC Helldiver in action. Carrollton, Tx: Squadron/Signal Publications.

d.                  Friedman, N (1983). U.S. Aircraft Carriers An Illustrated Design History. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press.

e.                   Karppi, W. (November-December 1995). The Ghost of Midway. Naval Aviation News, 22-23.

f.                    Mass, J ((1987). F2A Buffalo in action. Carrollton, Tx: Squadron/Signal Publications.

g.                   Shores, C.F. (1970). The Brewster Buffalo Profile 217. Windsor, Berkshire, England: Profile Publications Ltd.

h.                   Stern, R.C. (1993). The Lexington Class Carriers. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press.

i.                     http://www.navsource.org/archives/02/02.htm

j.          http://www.danford.net/buff.htm

All photos USN or the author except where separately credited

Part II will take the Lexington CAG into December 1941. Golden wings get painted over, and then painted over again. The SBC-4 departs and the F2A-3 replaces the –2; however, BuNos 2106 and 0300 are going to war.  On the horizon are December 7, the F4F Wildcat and the South Pacific.

Photos and text © 2005 by Joe Lyons

April 28, 2005

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