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Yellow Wings Decals 1/32 SBD-2 Dauntless #2106
By Chris Banyai-Riepl
When this sheet showed up, I had just received the Cutting Edge 1/32 Corsair decals. I chuckled at how difficult those 1/32 modelers have it, as their subjects are so big that aftermarket decal manufacturers can’t put more than one aircraft on a sheet. But when I dove into this sheet, I realized that, while this is only one aircraft, it is a complete life history of that plane, with no less than five different schemes portrayed. This one plane has an incredible history, starting from operations from one of the first US aircraft carriers and ending up at the bottom of Lake Michigan.
This sheet starts out with this plane decked out in its colorful prewar yellow wing phase in early 1941. Flying off of the USS Lexington, it had a yellow tail and the top half of the cowling was red. The plane carried the code 2B2 on the fuselage in black. In mid-1941, the plane was repainted in non-specular gray, with small fuselage roundels and the 2B2 code painted in white. In late 1941, this plane was again repainted, this time into the standard blue-gray over light gray, with the colorful red and white striped rudder and large national insignia. While wearing this scheme, this plane was left behind in Hawaii for engine repair. It was at Ford Field on December 7, 1941, and survived the Japanese attack. This plane then returned to the Lexington and fought in some of the early battles of the Pacific, returning to Pearl Harbor in April of 1942 for reassignment. A good thing, too, as the next trip of the Lexington was fatal, lost at the Battle of Coral Sea. This plane, instead, went to Midway Island, where it had the red and white rudder painted out, and the red centers of the national insignia painted out. It survived Midway (barely) and returned stateside in 1943 for use in a Carrier Qualification Training Unit out of Glenview, Illinois. Freshly repainted, this time the plane carried the fuselage code B-7 and the name “Midway Madness” on the nose. After surviving combat from the beginning of the war, the plane survived just a few months before stalling out and crashing into Lake Michigan, where it sank to a depth of 170 feet. It remained there until 1993, when it was recovered for the National Museum of Naval Aviation.
This sheet provides just about everything you need to make any one of these aircraft. The only thing that are missing are the national insignia (which are available on another Yellow Wings decal sheet) and the rudder stripes. For those ambitious people, you could pick up five Trumpeter SBDs and build the entire series, making for a very impressive (and large!) collection of a famous aircraft. The decals are well printed and, like other Yellow Wing releases, should go down quite nicely.
Rating:  [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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