Hi all,
I wasn't sure if this would be best placed here or in the skins section (or even off topic) so apologies if it's in the wrong place, but I'd like to pick the brains of the history buffs around here, and it is an aircraft related question...
Over the past year or two I've gotten into scale modeling and am trying to put together an F6F-5 of VF-80 Vorse's Vipers. LtCdr Vorse was credited with 11.5 kills during the war. However, the plate I was able to find of his hellcat doesn't have any kill markings. Going through my Osprey book on the fighter, I noticed that many hellcats lack any of these. I have a few questions:
1. Am I likely just looking at a plate of earlier in his career, before he had kills, or was applying kill markings not a mandatory/timely thing in the USN towards the end of the war?
2. I noticed that some of the plates for other aircraft have plates on either the port or starboard side, but of course with the Osprey books you're only getting one view of these, so I wasn't sure if they would in practice be applied to BOTH or just one side? I always thought they just went on one but thought I'd double check.
3. I noticed that some of the plates have the half kill represented with a Japanese flag cut diagonally, while others were cut vertically. I'm guessing that it was just whatever the crew chief decided at the time as two such examples, White 9 and White 10 of VF-27 each had one or the other despite being the same unit and the plates being from the same timeframe. All the same, I thought I'd double check if there was some significance to either variation?
I know they're kind of specific questions but I'm trying to make this model special as it's the squadron that operated from USS Ticonderoga and that town is quite meaningful to me. There aren't that many photos or plates to go by so I'd appreciate any help.
Thanks all,
