Douglas Decimator

[sequoiaranger]

Travel, sickness, and honey-do's have imposed their will on the completion of the Decimator, but I am now close! I have an IPMS meeting this Friday, so I am trying to get it presentable for that. I think I will have a few unfinished details (underwing where it won't easily be seen), but....I am confident the Decimator will "take wing" in a few days. I will post pics, of course, when the time comes.

[van883]

I am looking forward to seeing the end result!

Van

[sequoiaranger]

Gottta run to work. Coupla things on underside not done yet--won't be for the IPMS meeting tonight, but it is ready to be exhibited. Will post more/better pics later/tomorrow!

[Jschmus]

Beautiful!

[kitbasher]

Very beefy.  It's already sown the seeds for a whif idea!   

[sequoiaranger]

>Very beefy.<

Yeah, plenty beefy.

Compared to the original Devastator, twin .50's replace the single (twins for Midway) .30 rear-defense guns, for a start.

Wing guns here are deceptive--My Decimator has a .50 outboard in the folding section, but the "extra" gun ports outboard of the guns are fake. Harry Ferrier and Jay Manning, two of the original 8-T-1 crew, deliberately painted on such fake gunports just prior to the Midway mission, ostensibly to fool the Japanese into thinking their aircraft had more than one popgun facing forward. So I *HAD* to include them here, too.

The big tube just inboard of the folding break is a 5" rocket tube, with six missiles in a magazine. This ordnance was actually installed and tested in a Skyraider, but didn't go operational. In Sequoiaranger's world, a six-shooter of that size is ideal for merchant anti-shipping use, so I included it here on the Decimator.

The torpedoes are tremendous--26" of smackdown power. Normal torpedoes are 21 inch. The British and Italians used 18-inch. These "Whoppers" are described in the "Weapons, Real and Imagined" thread on torpedoes.


> It's already sown the seeds for a whif idea!<

I'll be waiting eagerly to see it!

[Brian da Basher]

Your Decimator is totally killer, SR! Love the paintwork, the exhaust staining and how you somehow managed to so convincingly morph all the best of a Devastator and a Skyraider all into one, right down to the colorful prop!

Most excellent!

Brian da Basher

[sideshowbob9]

The Decimator is fantastic! It looks like a completely natural progression from Devastator to Skyraider but that really belies the hard work we know you've put into it. Great job!

Oh, and it is beefy! 

[Captain Canada]

Wicked ! Awesome finish on this one.....love the paint and the weathering. The fake guns are an awesome idea as well, and I love the rocket tube !

[Ed S]

This turned out great.  Love the combination of Skyraider and Devistator.

Ed

[chrisonord]

Very nice indeed Craig 
I bet its rate of climb  multiplied unwillingly when those torpedo's were released
Chris.

[sequoiaranger]

Here's a nice pic of a Japanese Sailor's Nightmare! Note the gaping maw of the rocket tubes, the "fake gun ports", and the names of the crew on the torpedoes! The "C" on the wheel well door is all I could come up with for "Commander"--I didn't want the number "1" there, as it would be only a vertical line and hard for a viewer to decipher. Since regular aircraft would all have numbers there, I figured a "C" would stand out.



Next, the "Hornet-giving-the-finger" motif. The decal was very thin, plus the yellow and red were darkened and altered from the "tinting" from the paint underneath showing through, but you get the gist. I wish I had had an extra set of the Hornet decal--maybe one on top of the other would have alleviated that. This also shows the thickness of the home-made decal in the tail to indicate the "TB3D". There are some six spray coats of SOMETHING over the decal, but its edge still reveals its thickness.  



Then, there is the top-looking-down view, that shows SOME of the interior (instrument panels). The Decimator had THE most involved interior of any model I have done, but of course it won't show in the photo. Among other things, I had to manufacture some "S"-curved rails for the pilot canopy to rise up on (notice on the Devastator and Decimator that the sliding canopy piece is tilted back once it reaches the rear-most position.) The "regular" flat finish disgusted me (oh how I long for the 80's when the exact same method produced marvelous, contest-quality finishes), so I "chalked" the surface with smudges of white and black to break up the monotonous (and curiously speckled) finish to represent weathering.

[PACOPEPE]

Very well done, Craig. Great -and nice- paint job.

Good fellow of your Grumman Gander.


Cheers
Fran

[sequoiaranger]

The top color is specially selected to represent the light blue-gray seen on US Naval aircraft of mid-1942. My version has a slight light-turquoise tint to it, however. I have seen several different artists' impressions of the aircraft, while they were aboard a carrier and doing their art on the spot, and they almost always show the color slightly more green than most "official" renderings of artists after the fact. Unless the original artists had severely limited oils/pencils to work with, I think I could "trust" their judgment of color.

The "official" backstory would have the Decimators being painted in "Midway" colors (the CV-12 USS Hornet picking the brand-new Decimator aircraft up from Hawaii with the newly-reconstituted Torpedo 8 sometime late spring 1944) for the upcoming mission to re-take the Marianas that was estimated to coax out the carrier fleet of the Japanese for battle. The real TBD's aboard the Hornet at the time of Midway would be faded and battle-worn from extensive use prior to Midway. I suspect, since the Avenger that Bert Earnest flew from Midway was THE FIRST Avenger off the assembly line, and that this battle was the first use of the Avenger, that its paint would be pretty "factory fresh", so I can weasel out by saying that the Devastator cockpit the mechanics scavenged from an airfield hack for this particular Decimator had the old, faded paint, so the painters copied THAT for the whole plane.

The finished backstory will also have a few Japanese Midway-veteran Zero pilots (now flying Jinpu-Kais in defense of their carriers) "getting it" that the Midway-era paint was a form of vengeance for the previous slaughter.

[NARSES2]

Love it