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
Click on
images below to see larger images
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