1/48 Grumman F9F-2 Panther

Description

This is an injection-plastic jet aircraft model kit.

An all-new tooling of one of the most important of the early US jets, the Panther. This kit features a tremendous amount of detail in the cockpit and landing gear areas, and also features a folded-wing option and choice of bomb or rocket armament. The flaps and dive brakes are separate pieces, but note that the dive brakes were normally closed when the plane was on the ground. Also, parts C33 are plugs for the end of the tip tanks, and were always removed before flight. Very few photos show these in actual use. Also, part C1 is a stand to prevent the model from sitting on its tail; with proper ballast in the nose you wouldn’t need this part. Unused parts included in this kit are everything needed to build an F9F-2P!

There was a lot of talk about the windscreen being incorrect in test shots. We are happy to report this problem seems to have been fixed, and the windscreen no longer has a “MiG-15”-style frame bridging a “gap” between the center windscreen frames and the rear windscreen frame. The center frames now correctly curve all the way up to the windscreen bow, instead of curving up to meet just in front of the bow as was apparently the case in the test shot.

Decals are provided for three aircraft: V/209, BuNo 124709 of VF-112; V/202, BuNo 123439, also of VF-112; and D/114, BuNo 103672 of VF-781.