Kit: No. 4805
Scale: 1/48
Manufacturer: Czech Model, available from Squadron Mail Order, 1115 Crowley Drive, Carrollton, TX 75011-5010, &972-242-8663
Price: $29.95
Comments: Mixed media, 52 parts (29 injection molded, 21 resin, 2 vacuum-formed canopies), decals
Pros: Fine exterior and interior details, excellent canopies, good decals
Cons: Difficult assembly with few tabs and slots, landing gear details not shown well in instructions, no navigation lights in tip tanks
Certain that the Japanese were working on jet aircraft, the U.S. Navy sent requests for jet designs to several manufacturers late in 1944. The Bureau of Aeronautics (BuAer) chose three designs for development: McDonnell's FH-1 Phantom, Vought's F6U-1 Pirate, and the subject of this new kit, North American's FJ-1 Fury.
The Fury didn't get off the ground until September 1945, and with the reduction in forces following the war, production was limited to only 33 FJ-1s. The Fury holds the distinction of being the first U.S. Navy jet fighter in squadron service (VF-51) even though its stay was less than two years. The subject of Czech Model's kit is the airframe flown in the 1948 Bendix Race by VF-51 Cmdr. Pete Aurand. He finished second with an elapsed time from Long Beach to Cleveland of 4 hours, 13 minutes, at a speed of 484.674 mph.
The stubby, fat, straight-winged Fury has always been one of my favorites. Czech Model bags the plastic and resin parts separately. The plastic parts show recessed panel detail, but some of it is too fine and disappears under paint. The pair of beautifully vacuum-formed canopies allow you to see the good cockpit detail. Resin parts include cockpit details and flattened wheels. I like the molded-in seat belts and wheel-well framing of the resin parts, but many of the small plastic parts have poor detail.
The large, easy-to-follow assembly instructions include parts diagrams that help identify the small resin parts. FS numbers are provided for exterior and interior colors. The assembly drawings are vague on landing gear details, though. The oleo scissors on the nose gear should be angled to the right side of the airplane, and the main gear doors should be separated as in the front view in the decaling diagram, not as in the scrap view in step 5. Also, the front door of the nose gear is missing its brace.
With only 52 parts, you might suspect an easy assembly, but this kit is not for beginners. There are no locating pins, and the wings and horizontal stabilizers butt join to the roots - no tabs or slots. The wings are not thick enough to match the wing roots on the fuselage, so I had to push plastic wedges between wing halves to make them match. The obvious navigation lights at the front of each wing-tip tank (and shown on the box-cover drawing) are not included. I found a couple of model-railroad lenses to match. The main gear mounts in the top wing panels are shallow and weak and needed to be beefed up. You might want to straighten the armored head rest in the cockpit as it slopes too far forward.
Fitting the resin nose-gear well and engine intake into the roughly molded nose interior in step 2 is difficult. Plastic must be removed to make the parts fit properly. Install the intake and tail pipe first, then work on the cockpit installation. It must be located with the ridges on the back of the seat bulkhead placed on top of the crosspanel on each fuselage half. Make sure the cockpit and arresting hook mount are level when viewed fore and aft. Finally, sand and fit the nose gear well, which also must be mounted level. Super glue will not hold this piece well because the walls of the well are thin. So, be prepared to have it pop loose when you install the gear strut. Not mentioned in the instructions is the need for about 1/4-ounce of weight in the nose.
I couldn't find the throttle lever in my sample, and the resin control stick had disintegrated. It took just a few minutes to scratch build one. You'll need to be careful aligning the upper and lower wing surfaces and the fuselage halves so that panels line up properly.
I airbrushed my model with AeroMaster Gloss Sea Blue. The decals were thin enough to curl under the edge of the backing paper. Always slide these decals directly into a puddle of water on the model. Solvent was not required. The number and the stencil decals seemed a bit over scale, and the painting and marking instructions don't show the stencils provided on the decal sheet. I used Bare-Metal Foil to simulate the polished surfaces of the oleo struts.
The model scales pretty close to measurements provided on the box cover. A good reference is Steve Ginter's Naval Fighters, North American FJ-1 Fury.
I spent a little over 18 hours on my Fury, most of it trying to make the parts fit inside the fuselage. Should modelers buy and build this kit? Absolutely! It takes a little more effort than some other kits, but I like my model just fine.
- Al Jones