North American T-6 Weta

[The Rat]

When the German Kriegsmarine surface raider Orion appeared in the waters near New Zealand in the winter of 1940, it was realised that increased anti-shipping capability was needed, and imports of such aircraft as the Douglas Dauntless had yet to arrive. A single Harvard was despatched to the maintenance and overhaul depot at Woodbourne, near Blenheim, to investigate the practicality of conversion to a dive bombing role.



The conversion was not graceful, with expediency requiring a simple shortening of the canopy to allow for a single machine gun firing to the rear, two bombs attached to underwing mounts, and perforated dive brakes on the underside of the trailing edge. Test flights showed no undesirable tendencies, and the power of the P&W Wasp engine was more than sufficient to handle the encumbrances.



A further three aircraft were converted, but despite a few 'scrambles' there was no actual combat, as the raiders chose to stay well offshore, and with the arrival of the Dauntless all airframes were converted back to trainer standard.



This model represents the first article, before the rearrangement of the radio aerial from the normal dorsal mounting to an underside configuration. While given no formal name, crews were known to refer to it as a Weta, which is a group of large, fierce-looking, native insects, often with numerous spiky protuberances.

[Rick Lowe]

Oh, cool!
Nice execution there, and I can appreciate how you came up with 'Weta'. 

One of those 'Why didn't they think of it at the time'-type situations.

[comrade harps]

I like it. Neat. 

It makes perfect sense, too, as us Aussies did something similar with the Wirraway:



From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAC_Wirraway
The CA-5, CA-7, CA-8 and CA-9 models were all broadly similar to the CA-3; only the CA-16 variant featured substantial design changes; amongst other purposes, several wing modifications had been made to allow for the carriage of a heavier bomb load, along with the addition of dive brakes for dive-bombing.[8] Sets of 'dive bomber' wings (as fitted to the CA-16) were built under the designation of CA-10A (the CA-10 model was a proposed dive-bomber variant that remained unbuilt),[8] and retrofitted to CA-3s, −5s, −7s and −9s; 113 Wirraways were converted.

[The Rat]

It makes perfect sense, too, as us Aussies did something similar with the Wirraway

I did not know that! And I notice they also didn't re-arrange the antenna, which could have led to a gunner shooting through the wire and leaving the aircraft with a few pounds of extra weight in useless tubes and metal housings!

[The Rat]

Looking at the pictures, there's something weird going on. The dive brakes look white, which is the original colour of the plastic, but the photos were taken after they were painted in the same grey as the rest of the underside. Must be something to do with the light and/or the angle. Also, the stretched sprue antenna wire looks curve upward, but looking at it in real life it looks perfectly straight. Might smoke it later to make sure.

[PR19_Kit]

Also, the stretched sprue antenna wire looks curve upward, but looking at it in real life it looks perfectly straight. Might smoke it later to make sure.

Spherical aberration of the camera lens maybe?

[NARSES2]

I've been watching this come together and it was well worth it 

Very neat and very plausible. Like the New Zealand markings especially. You really do get a lot of national markings options if you choose to model the RNZAF in the SW Pacific.

[zenrat]

Very good.

[Old Wombat]

Cool!

[KiwiZac]

Lovely work Dave, this turned out as awesome as I was hoping. Beautiful work!

[The Rat]

Lovely work Dave, this turned out as awesome as I was hoping. Beautiful work!

Glad you like it!

[Captain Canada]

Wow that looks great Rat ! Nice little story too.