The old bent wing Corsair’s history has been repeated many times. It has also been one of the very favorites of all modelers the world over and more so in the last few years when Tamiya  came out with all their nice versions. We are all aware of what the aircraft did in two wars and how rugged it was and how it was one of the very best aircraft during the home stretch of WWII  (yea, I know, big debate between the P-51, F6F, but no Axis types because they all lost). The primary Corsair types that fought for the allied forces in the Pacific were the F4U-1 “Bird Cage” and the Bubble tops, the F-4U-1A and the F4U-1D.

The version I tried to model, is the F4U-1A, which was a slight step up from the first production “Birdcage” with better visibility bubble type canopies. I say tried because, I had to do it the hard way which we will cover shortly. The model depicted here was an actual F4U-1A flown  by a Marine Lt. J.T. O’Connell of VMF 321 and was photographed aboard the USS KWAJALEIN in August of 1944. That seems to indicate a cleaner, non-sand/ rock chipped aircraft that most of the Marine Corp planes had during that period. I don’t know  if the plane was assigned carrier use at that time or was just a temp stop over during a combat mission which sometimes happened. 

To start with, the old Otaki F4U-1A is and was, by today’s standards, a dinosaur of models. The basis of this build was a dog of dogs but the only one of it’s kind in 1/48 scale prior to the very nice release of the Tamiya F4Us which came after I went to all the effort and hard work to have me a nice “bent wing”. (Your editor would like to refute the 'dog' appellation given to the Otaki F4U kit. Yes, it is over 30 years old, but it is quite accurate and in my mind, far from being a pooch.) It was just a short few months after mine was complete that the Tamiya bird was released but the modeling law had struck again as always. BUT! I am not sad nor too disappointed with the outcome of that model. I have since built the Tamiya kit and have more in the hanger and they are very simple to build next to what I did to the Otaki kit. 

Some of you will remember back a few years ago, the complete make over detail set, by High Tech (later part of KMC) which included many, many detail parts just for the Otaki Corsair, which was expensive but gave you a bucket full of resin cockpit parts, metal/resin parts to make a complete engine, flaps, Rudder, etched metal for detailing everything, and new resin wheel wells, wheels, and cowl flaps and new gear doors and Brewster Bomb Rack etc. anyway you get the Idea. Well, that is what I got and went to work on cutting up the Otaki kit and installed all that stuff. It took a while but at first I thought I could make the Hobbycraft kit work better because it just came out shortly afterward. No dice, the chunk of resin for the cockpit would not fit at all so I gave up and went back to the original idea.