Curtiss S2c Goshawk

[Mossie]

During the early years of the world war II, the US Navy employed several scout/observation types in it's operations, such as the Curtiss SO3C Seamew & Vought OS2U Kingfisher.  These were designed with three crew & as large, stable machines able to operate in heavy weather, out in front of the fleet to spot enemy ships & aircraft formations.  However, once they entered operations it quickly became apparent that their large size made them slow & ponderous & easy meat to enemy fighters that could soon catch up with them.

The Navy quickly found it was without effective spotters & at a distinct disadvantage.  The effectiveness of the Japanes floatplane conversion of their zero fighters made the Navy sit up & take notice.  In 1942, due to it's experience with both floatplanes & fighters, Curtiss was commisioned to design & build an equivalent aircraft.  Fast, armed with machine guns & able to carry bombs or search radar, the Curtiss SC Sea Hawk was expected to be a very capable scout aircraft.

The problem was, design of an aircraft from scratch took time & it would be 1944 before the Sea Hawk was in service.  The Navy desperately needed an interim type to replace the SO3C's & OS2U's.  The eldery Curtiss SOC Seagull biplane was actually being put into service in favour of these two types.  Again, Curtiss was approached due to it's experience with floatplanes & fighters & they suggested a conversion of their P-40.  Some changes would be needed to make it suitable for naval operation but it was reckoned that it could be in service in 6-9 months.

The Goshawk entered service before the Seahawk, but was as given the S2C designation as design started after this type.  Although the P-40 itself it was not a perfect platform, it's good performance at low to mid altidute seemed suited to the role & they were plentiful, production was in full swing & easily capable of accomdating the numbers of aircraft that the Navy needed.  Although it only saw breif service in the US Navy (although a few entered service in other countries air forces late in the war, including Brazil, Australia & New Zealand) & not as capable as some of it's Japanese counterparts, the S2C acquited itself well before being replaced by the SC Sea Hawk.

Simon

[Mossie]

Well I guess I've been a busy bee lately!  Still slow, but at least I'm building things now.

I've got to admit, the only real reason I entered this GB was to test out HobbyBoss's kits!  I didn't intend on entering this one I as was hoping to enter several others, I didn't have a kit in the stash & there were several other projects that seemed to take priority.  I wanted to try out a HobbyBoss kit as a quick build & when I spotted a comic store had some I thought, great.  Then I spied a few P-40's & thought I might as well put it into the GB!

Trouble is, it didn't work like that.  After having several ideas including a bipe, I settled on a floatplane.  I particularly wanted to do one in the Curtiss fashion with a single main float & outriggers.  I thought I could adapt the floats from a Supermarine S.6B I had, nope, far too small.  Then I thought I'd get hold of a suitable kit at a model show, picked up a Seiran along with a Grumman Duck, with the idea of combining the two, but again the Seirans floats were too small.  I was thinking of forgetting about the whole idea, but I just had my heart set on this layout & nothing else would do.

In looking for ideas for this build, the SC Sea Hawk had caught my eye, a type I knew little about before hand.  It's a lesser known but very successful scout type used by the US Navy in late WWII & seemed perfect to base my build on.  Especially when I found out the SO3C's were getting shot into matchwood long before the Sea Hawk appeared.  Trouble was getting a kit, being an obscure type it was hard to find a one, but I found out SMER had aquired an Antares (who?) mould that was supposed to be quite nice.  I eventually got hold of one & it donated it's floats to the P-40M I'd got previously.

So here it is, the 'easy' build that's taken me so long to sort out!  The P-40 kit went together fine, although it needed a lot of (& probably still some more) PSR on the upper & lower fuselage halves.  Getting the floats to fit was slightly probalamatic.  The sponsons were a bit flimsy & tended to knock off at first, even with brass pins, but I eventually persuaded them to stay.  The main float was alot easier, I could have just butt joined it (no location points on the SMER Sea Hawk kit to remove) but I decided to add a support to give it some more strentgh.

The only other things I've done is to remove four of the machine guns & add a tail fillet.  I wanted to stick as close to the Curtiss line as possible.  The Sea Hawk had only two guns to save weight & it & the Seamew both could swap their floats for fixed undercarriage.  In fact, they were delivered with wheels; floats were ordered sepeartely.  To add a little stability, I decided to go with a fillet.  Because of that swappable undercarriage, I couldn't go the same route as JHM with a lower fin as it'd rendered the wheels unuseable.  I could have gone with ventral strakes like the Rufe, but I felt this was more 'Curtiss', both the Seamew & the Sea Hawk had similar fillets.  Oh, & I had to replace the machines guns I intended to keep as I found out the HobbyBoss styrene is very soft, easy to work with, but small items are easily damaged too.








Still some work to do mind!  Oh yeah, I forgot, I can't stand canopy masking, it's laborious & I'm no good at it!

[Brian da Basher]

Wow is that sharp, Mossie! Those floats look absolutely killer! It seems you did a fine job on the canopy masking too, effort that I'm sure will pay off!

Brian da Basher

[Mossie]

Thanks Bri!  I'm not so sure about the canopy masking, close up there's some ragged edges.  Well, there's only one way to find out, & that's to slap some paint on!  I'm not sure what I do wrong, I use a brand new scalpel blade, I take time, but the edges are never quite right, when I've pulled the masking off on other builds it hasn't looked much better than careful hand painting.  We'll see how this one goes!

Won't be doing any more work on this for a little while as I'm off to Lake Garda in Italy for a weeks hols, see you all soon!

[ysi_maniac]

Neat looking, indeed.
     

I agree: canopy masking is so f****** boring. But it has to be done. Anyway, I think that your work at that had been just perfect.
sometimes the life of a modeler can be really hard  

[Daryl J.]

Schweet!!!

Daryl J., bobbing head up and down repeatedly.

[John Howling Mouse]

It is so exciting to see how much of a difference the alternate float-configuration makes.

I daresay yours is far more dynamic than my own version...

....so don't stop now!!!

P.S. Did you square off the wingtips or is that just how the kit came?  I can't tell which kit provided which parts in the end...HobbyBoss makes for some What If's right out of the box, I think.

Did you take any "in-progress" shots that you could show up to this point?

[Mossie]

Thanks again guys!

Carlos, only one way to find out how good the canopy masking is, that's to paint it up & peel it off!  I've definatley taken off some of the Klear (Future) due to my clumsy work with the scalpel, but I'm hoping you're right.

Baz, I think it's great to see the contrast between yours & mine.  Don't worry, I'm keeping on going, I've only stopped this week due to a holiday, I'm itching to get going again.  I haven't felt like this about modelling in a long while & it feels good!

Yes, I squared off the wingtips, forgot to mention that.  Thought it could do with the longitudinal stability for those catapult launches, again, I'm closely following the family line between the SO3C & the SC.  The plastic was so easy to work with, cutting the wingtips was like slicing through butter & it didn't take long to get the shape.  I've seen some of the other HobbyBoss P-40's, and although the early & late marks are made quite differently, you quite easily swap parts between similar marks.  Very easy to whiff!

Didn't take any inprogress pics I'm afraid, but to be honest there wasn't much to see.  The HobbyBoss kit is so simple, the wings are moulded into the lower fuselage so you don't have to worry about those.  The cockpit has zero (& I mean zero!) detail except the seat & stick, I didn't add anything as I wanted to keep it simple, but I really wish I had now as it's really apparent.  The floats where added on quite easily, I guess I should have taken a couple of pics of them, but I was on a roll & completley forgot!

[cthulhu77]

Very impressive work, indeed.  Are you going to use the blue/yellow colours?

[BlackOps]

Mossie, Looking really nice. I too am dreading masking off the canopy, I might just try and freehand the frames intead...not sure which is the least of the two evils  

I think the floats look very good. I'm also impressed that two P-40 floatplanes can look so different.

[Mossie]

Greg, which scheme do you mean?  I was thinking of a three-tone grey/white atlantic scheme, but when I saw Baz's I was worried it would be very similar.  I guess I could go with a two-tone atlantic scheme.  Anyone else any ideas???

[Daryl J.]

Similar schemes are just fine in my book.  B)    It's your kit to paraphrase Modeler Al (RIP).    I'm just glad to see a diversion from OD/NG.      



Daryl J.