The
slow moving TBD-1 Devastator is the subject of this decal sheet 48808 from
TechMod of Poland.
It contains the markings for seven aircraft, six wearing the 1942
scheme of blue-grey topside and light grey underside camo and the last one
with gold wings markings from the USS Wasp’s VS-71.
Among them are the Midway markings for the Commanders of VT-8 (USS
Hornet) and VT-6 (USS Enterprise), John Waldron and Eugene Lindsey.
There are two mistakes in my copy of the title sheet (corrected in later issues.) Both the markings for Waldron’s and Lindsey’s planes are wrong as they have the old style US Insignia with the red meatball in the middle of the white star. In the actual instructions, they are the correct blue roundel with white star in the middle.
What makes this sheet better than others is the fact that
it contains two sets of vinyl masks, one for the mother of all greenhouse
canopies and the other to do all the ID bands on USS Wasp’s “Wings of Gold”
TBD-1 which is very useful as anyone who has built a model plane with
markings from the era
can attest to.
The decals are typical aftermarket decals with a thin carrier border and the colors seem to be in register. They contain enough stencils and the US Navy style tricolor blade tip markings. I’ve never used TechMod decals before so I can not say whether or not these will work well with various decal solutions. If these are similar to Tally-Ho decals (another Polish decal company) then they will be all right.
April 2009