1/32 Trumpeter SBD-5 Dauntless – Part 1
When The Weathering Magazine’s aircraft-focused spinoff, Weathering Aircraft, reached out to me about doing a build for an upcoming publication, the request was pretty wide open. World War II, with a focus on painting a camoflage scheme.
After a few false starts, I decided to tackle a late-war SBD-5 Dauntless. The Douglas SBD Dauntless is one of the unsung workhorses of the war. Slated for replacement before the first bombs even fell at Pearl Harbor, it proved instrumental in turning the tide in the Pacific, and was ultimately responsible for sinking more Japanese ships than any other aircraft.
The SBD-3, which distinguished itself at Coral Sea, Midway and Guadalcanal, gets the lion’s share of the attention, but the -5 was the most produced variant, and did a lot of the dirty work later in the war. It also wore the tricolor camoflage that I personally find more interesting than the bluegray over light gray of the early war dive bombers.
It’s been nearly six years since I built my last Dauntless – Accurate Miniatures’ SBD-3 (my second build after coming back to the hobby). My memories of that kit have dimmed, but I clearly recall the frustration with the cockpit, which built up in a sort of top/bottom sandwich with the cockpit floor loading up and into the fuselage. This made test-fitting next to impossible and ultimately caused some issues getting everything installed, with some elements hanging down trying to occupy the same space as those loading up.
The wingroots, too, were a challenge on that kit. But it was my second kit back to the hobby, so just as likely my own incompetence.
Trumpeter’s side-load approach to the cockpit clears away the problems the AccuMini kit ran into, though the initial test-fit shows that the wingroots are still an issue.
More on that later. (more…)