1/72 Planet Resin BTD-1 Destroyer

by Jim Flagg

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I used to belong to the National Warplane Museum when it was in Geneseo, NY.  When they moved to Elmira, NY, I let my membership lapse.  But I still made all their airshows and visited their museum fairly regular (their new digs are MUCH better than they were in Geneseo).  A couple of years ago, they obtained a Douglas BTD-1 Destroyer to refurbish. I think their website says it came from the Marine Corps.  Anyway - I knew then I needed a model of this little known plane.  A few months ago, I found the Planet Resin kit and snapped it up.
My first try at resin - and it was a good one!  The BTD-1 evolved as a replacement for  the SBD Dauntless. The original design was called the XSB2D Destroyer and was essentially the same plane except it included a gunner who operated two remote machine gun turrets.  The plane had a huge internal weapons bay that could handle extra fuel tanks, bombs, depth charges, and even two torpedoes with only a slight modification to fairings around the bomb bay.  Lessons being learned in the Pacific war led the Navy to drop the requirement for the extra gunner and guns.  They wanted a solo pilot manned airplane.  Development switched to the eventual BTD-1.  The turrets were gone, but other than that, it was very similar.  Development suffered as the Navy insisted on the biggest radial engine available.  It was quite the challenge to fit that engine into what was supposed to be a nimble and quick attack plane.  Several planes were manufactured and flown during WWII, but much too late to have a part in the action.  The BTD-1 was the first aircraft to be tested in a full scale wind tunnel and the forerunner to NASA spent a lot of time on these testbeds.  The dive brakes had to be totally different  from the SBD and the SB2C and provided some great learning experiences.

 But the Navy, changes their specs in mid-stream (again - surprise surprise), and the Destroyer was again modified to include a turbine engine along with its radial engine. The result was very disappointing.   On the verge of losing the Navy's business,Ed Henniman scrapped the whole plane and came up with a new design, overnight in his hotel room.  The aircraft emerging from this became the A-1 Skyraider - a pretty good replacement. 

I was very pleased with the Planet Model.  Fit was great and the level of  detail was pretty darn good.  I did find out, though, that the finely engraved panel lines are too shallow in some places and its darn hard to rescribe resin!

 The instructions were only fair (for me).  Two vacuformed canopies were provided and I thought about trying to cut one up so I could have the canopy open, but I chickened out at the last minute. The cockpit details were great and I really should have posed it open. The only real shortcoming was the total lack of the bomb bay. The engraved lines around the bomb bay might provide some brave souls a guide to cut the doors open and scratch built a bomb bay, but was certainly beyond my abilities.  I put 1 and 1/2 ounces of lead in the plane, behind the engine and in front of the cockpit, but as you can see, the nose sitter is determined to be a tail sitter.   Also - the landing gear is not really strong enough to support the weight of the plane.
I should have replaced it with some scratch built struts.  I have since been able to get hold of a XSB2D model from Olimp Pro Resin line.  Its definitely next on my 'to do' list.

 Pictures aren't the greatest, but it was a fun project and turned out OK in my eyes.

Jim

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Photos and text © by Jim Flagg