With surprise furlough days I had extra time pop up this week.
Found this one through the guys who do Fundekals, they post to a large scale model site and put as much info on each plane they produce decals for. Thankfully they seem to have similar standards as Hitech and put time to prove what they produce is correct and no made up. This one was spotted from old news real footage and has some really strange markings along with VBF-83 Bowtie/Hourglass "G" code. The nose has a hand sprayed white ring that has no set line, this would be the same time yellow was used so Essex had a mix of yellow and white nose aircaft. Crews must have used what ever color was available or already being sprayed. The wing tips have white lines and on the starboard side it carries around the edge. They couldn't find a reason or squad that had previously used these aircraft and were putting calls into Dana Bell and Jim Sullivan both considered Corsair experts. I'm thinking it was never solved. The rear doors also are white and not something I've seen or at least remember seeing.
The gun canisters are so crazy they can't be pieced back together and also have what appears to be older Blue Gray mixed in as well. Some are so odd they were also trying to find out if canisters could be switched between different types. The Essex seems to have had a few odd ducks and even some with kill markings which were extremely rare that late on CV's. I'll be hitting 1 or 2 of those later.
IMG_1054 by
whitemanLS1, on Flickr
IMG_1055 by
whitemanLS1, on Flickr
vf83 by
whitemanLS1, on Flickr
vf83 3 by
whitemanLS1, on Flickr
vf83 2 by
whitemanLS1, on Flickr
vf83 4 by
whitemanLS1, on Flickr
