I remember hearing about this kit when it first came out, and I was really excited.  Up until that time, there was only the old Monogram kit in 1:48 scale, which was more a toy than a plastic model.  Tamiya did a fine job with this kit, producing a beautiful and pretty faithfull representation of Leroy Grumman's stubby little fighter. 

I really liked the detail in the cockpit and engine.  Surface detail is good with the subtle rivets and fabric surfaces.  Dry fitting some of the parts, and you can see this kit is going to go together well.  Some minor shortcomings do exist, even on a terrific kit like this one.  The cockpit floor.  F4Fs had cutouts in the cockpit floor, in order for the pilot to see out the lower fuselage windows.  Needless to say that on the actual aircraft, these windows really weren't much use, and were deleted in the FM-2 model years later.  Early F4Fs had the cut floor and Tamiya goofed and gives the modeler a solid floor.  This can be easily fixed by cutting the floor yourself, but it's still a silly mistake by Tamiya.  Another gaff, is the absence of a second oil cooler in the wheel bay.  F4Fs had two, one port, one starboard.  Tamiya gives you the port.  This can be fixed by either scratch building one, or casting one in resin.  Using the kit part as a template, and rig the plumbing from soft solder or fine wire.  The others are, an omitted navigation light on top of the port wingtip, and the sliding part of the canopy doesn't fit over the spine well.  Otherwise she's a beauty of a model and I think a better F4F than the Hobby Boss family that has recently appeared.

Construction went quickly and easily.  Amazing how much time one can save when there is not a whole lot of sanding and fixing seams.  Such is the case with this kit.  All the major assemblies line up nicley, eliminating the need for a lot of time consuming clean up.  Many of the seams, seem to line up where the real seam would appear on the aircraft itself.  Cockpit is nicely done, and loads into a glued fuselage without a hitch.  Many of the sub-assemblies go together as seperate units and can be installed in a modular fashion.  The kit is very well engineered and seems to "Build itself".

I wasn't crazy about Tamiya's decals.  Not with this kit, or any of the other models Tamiya has produced.  I wound up hitting the spares box and "Borrowing" stuff from an Aeromaster sheets. 

I Painted the model using Floquil Military Enamels, which I personally think are the best paints ever made for plastic modeling.  It is finished in the early war US Navy scheme of Lt. Blue-Gray over Lt Gray.  Weathering was done using thinned oils and pastel chalk .  Chips are chrome silver and a teeny tiny brush.  

I used John Lundstrom's outstanding book, "The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign", as a basis for the markings.  She is made up as the F4F-4, flown by Lt. John Leppla of VF-10, during the Battle of Santa Cruz in October of 1942.  The kill marks are a little "Creative" I admit as Lt Leppla was credited with allegedly shooting down four B5N "Kate"s during the Coral Sea fight while flying an SBD.  His sort of bravado would have had him displaying he kill marks.  Unfortunately, Lt Leppla was killed in action when his formation was jumped by A6M2s.

Thanks for reading my post.  I really liked the model, I thought the build was a great time and I loved it.  I know the Hobby Boss kit is a pretty good one too, they even fixed a couple of the Tamiya errors but some of their detail is WAY over done, making the Tamiya kit, king of the 1:48 "Wildcats"