Hasegawa 1/72 Brewster B-239 Buffalo 'Finnish Air Force'

HASEGAWA 1:72 BREWSTER B-239 BUFFALO
Finnish Air Force

Reviewer: Jon Hudak (rec.models.scale)
Kit Review submitted: 8 June 2008

Aircraft History:

Basically considered the maligned stepchild by US Navy fliers and not having favored too well in the hands of the British and Dutch fliers either, the Brewster Buffalo would have a chance to redeem itself in the hands of the Finnish Air Force pilots. Unlike the majority of the US Navy personnel the Finns loved the airplane and many aces racked up an impressive number of kills flying the airplane. The Finnish pilots came to appreciate the rugged little Buffalo and its exceptional range and ease of maintenance in the field. In the hands of the Finnish Air Force pilots the Buffalo would rack up one of the best kill/loss ratios and only some 19 were lost in combat while being responsible for shooting down some 496 enemy aircraft. An impressive ratio indeed.

The Kit:

Hasegawas kit of the B-239 Buffalo is a little gem. Inside are six sprues of gray plastic and two separate ones containing a set of poly caps for the prop shaft and a clear one for the canopy and related parts. There are a total of 80 parts, quite a lot! But not all of them will be used and the instructions clearly show which ones won't be (shaded) needed. Everything was cleanly executed and the moldings are crisp and clear. Panel line detail is of course recessed along with a bit of rivet detail which is also recessed.

Markings are provided for four aircraft. The first one, "NOKA" which is either late or post war judging by the date which is from1945. It has the current style Finnish roundels in white and blue and this example graces the box art obviously for legal matters in not reproducing the swastika in printed form. Number 2 is "orange 4" as flown by legendary Finnish ace Ilmari Juutilainen of 3/LeLv24. Number 3 or "orange 3" as we'll refer to it is of MSgt. Lauri Nissinen of 3/Lv24. Lastly, number 4 is "black 6" which was flown by E. Riihikalio of 4/LeLv 24. Except for the first aircraft all of the camouflage schemes are in Finnish Olive and black over light blue/gray with yellow cowls, fuselage bands and on the bottoms of the wing tips.

Number 1 is the same scheme but without the yellow areas. It's interesting that aircraft no. 3 is shown without its antenna while all the other ones have theirs. I've seen a photo showing this aircraft in flight with several more of its kind. It's the farthest one away from the camera and looks almost like its missing its mast but that I believe is due to the distance that nearly renders the antenna invisible. Perhaps this photo is one Hasegawa used? I've had this kit in my stash for almost 6 years and am looking forward to building it as it looks like it will be a really good one.

Construction:

Construction began with the cockpit which gives you a little more than the standard tub and seat. It is made up of a two piece floor, seat, control column, foot pedals and an armored panel/head & shoulder protection plate that the Finns installed on their Buffalos. An instrument panel with decal is also provided. Once assembled the whole mess including the interiors of the cowling and fuselage halves plus all the related parts for the roll-over pylon were painted with Humbrol Metalcote #27002 Aluminum using the airbrush. The wings were glued together right around this time also.

The grip on the control column and the instrument panel were painted with some flat black and later a bit of Future was slapped on the latter in preparation for the decal. This and the cockpit assembly were test fitted and then glued in between the fuselage halves. Everything fit like it was supposed to. I made the mistake of not being too careful when test fitting part A16 which is the block-off plate where the window unit would normally go on the US and other versions on the belly of the plane. Once that part was in try as I might I could not get it out, arghh! I elected to just slather in plenty of filler to smooth things out and it worked out fine. Fit of everything so far was excellent and hardly any filler was used on the fuselage other than this spot. Around this time the completed tail cone was glued on to the fuselage and parts B3 & B4 to the forward edge which help form up part of the wheel wells and are very small and easy to lose if you drop them so be careful!

The wings and stabilizers came next and these too fitted very nicely. In fact once the wings were dry I applied some Mr. Surfacer to the wing roots and wiped them down with a Q-tip moistened with Acetone after letting the filler tack up for a good 20 minutes or so. The joints came out perfect and whoila.....no messy sanding necessary! A similar treatment was used on the stabilizers though I did have to touch them up a couple of times with filler and sandpaper. The cowling assembly was glued together and the engine painted flat black and "dry brushed" with a silver pencil. A little bit of test or dry fitting will come in handy before gluing the cowl unit together but again it just comes down to having a little patience and in the end it too fitted together well. A little filler was needed to blend in the cowl ring and also along the top of the fuselage forward of the windscreen.

Painting:

The fit of this kit was really good and helped shorten the build time considerably. The forward inside edge of the fuselage was brush painted with a couple of coats of Humbrol 27002 Metalcote as were the wheel wells. The cowling assembly was now tacked into place and with things shaping up it wasn't long before the airframe was ready for painting. Seeing as Buffalos had a lot of glass I used a recently purchased Eduard express mask which certainly beat doing it all by hand and didn't take too long to apply either. This mask was of the new variety and is basically similar (if not the same thing) to Tamiya tape and certainly beats the material they used to use. I noticed I had a hard time getting the rear canopy to fit over the roll-over pylon assembly. More on this later.

Colors for Finnish aircraft of WW2 can be a bit confusing. Many color illustrations and profiles depict the bottom blue color being anything from a pale light hue to an almost loud, brighter, vibrant hue not unlike the color used on WW2 VVS Soviet aircraft. As for the green topside color I have seen it portrayed as being similar to Olive Drab or similar to a dark Euro Green color like FS 34092. Being in a bit of a quandary about which colors to use I realized that either way it would still look good whichever colors were used. Some color photos from my Squadron Finnish Air Force book showed the green color to resemble more of an Olive Drab color and that's basically what I used.

Model Master Enamels were mostly used except where noted. Before doing the yellow areas, ( i.e. cowling, fuselage band and bottom wing tips) I used some of their Header Flat White first for an underlying or primer coat. I couldn't find my RLM 04 Yellow and wanting to do things "at that moment" left me with some Russian Trainer Yellow that I'd had lying around for a few years and had never used. So far so good and the next day I masked off all these areas. The fuselage band just as my friend said would be the hardest thing to mask but it was nothing a little patience and ingenuity couldn't figure out. The key there obviously is to use multiple pieces of tape (I prefer Tamiya) cut into long, thin strips. Don't try and do it with just one piece especially on something like a fuselage, you'll just give yourself headaches if you do and both ends of the tape will almost never line up together and meet.

The color photos also revealed that the light blue color was a soft, pale shade. Looking through various colors in my paint stocks I felt RLM 76 would be a pretty good match so that's what I used. I'm not saying what I did was 100% correct and as we know colors used on military aircraft and vehicles especially from over 60 years ago can be quite open to speculation. The bottom of the model was masked off once the paint was dry and then it was time to start painting the upper surfaces and antenna mast in the green color. It was during this time just before I was getting ready to spray the green that I dropped the model! Talk about nearly having a heart attack as I watched it drop out of my hand before it hit the floor! Luckily nothing happened except for the canopy coming off. Part of this I attributed to since the rear section had never firmly seated all the way down thanks to the interference of the aforementioned roll-over pylon assembly. For the time being I had to tear this assembly out so that the rear canopy section would stay firmly seated. I had even tried sanding it down hoping to get it to fit but to no avail. So I left out the rearward angled piece hoping to successfully reinstall it later.

The front windscreen went back on with some Elmers white glue. Getting back to the Finnish Olive color, for this I used Italian Olive as it wasn't as stark as regular Olive Drab and is a bit lighter too. Being on a deadline to have this kit finished by the weekend all painting was done in succession and on a daily basis. I was getting down to the wire here and now came the onerous task of masking for the black. Not feeling confident enough to do the camouflage pattern freehand I resorted to masking the rest................joy! I had to get this done that night so the real fun was about to begin. Though wraparound camouflage schemes look great, they're definitely not my favourite when it comes to having to paint them!

I started with the horizontal stabilizers, fuselage and tail and had some of it done but was debating on how I was going to do the wings when suddenly an idea came to fruition. Having a roll of about 2" wide Tamiya tape sitting around which I still hadn't used after several years I thought if I could lie this down over a wing and use it as a mask I'd be all set. I cut off a piece just long enough to cover an entire wing and using the kit instructions as a guide I drew the patterns onto the tape then took the piece of tape off the wing, placed it on a piece of plexiglass and cut it up. This method really saved me a lot of time. Another part of masking wraparound schemes I dislike doing is when the color extends up from the wing onto a side of the fuselage. It's not impossible to do but does take a few tries to get the tape to lay right and unless you're on a deadline you don't have to drive yourself crazy by doing it all in one night.

Finishing:

Once everything was masked and ready some Floquil railroad colors Engine Black was used as it's a bit softer than regular flat black and looks more to scale. This paint was an absolute joy to work with and sprayed beautifully through the airbrush. (I've heard from friends that their long since discontinued series of military colors were superb, after using the Engine Black color I can see why) After some sufficient drying time came one of my favourite parts....removing all the masking tape, much akin to unwrapping a present! Next a coat of Testors Glosscote was sprayed on in preparation for the decals.

I knew from the start that these decals had seen better days. The date on the box is from 1996 so that put them as being well over 10 years old and they looked it. The type that you know is invariably going to silver. I just hoped they'd work as these were all I had. I wanted to do "Orange 3" the mount of Finnish ace Lauri Nissinen mostly because of the "farting elk" character that was painted on the base of either side of the tail fin. While the Finnish "roundels" on the wings went down without a hitch, one of the codes for the fuselage (in this case "BW-384") barely got on without breaking up into a couple of pieces, but I managed to piece it back together. I was not to be so lucky with the second one and it fragmented into a million pieces....argh! A quick call to a friend brought me the extra needed i.d. number as well as the rest of this set of markings. How generous. In hindsight I'd wished I would have asked him this beforehand as his decals looked like new and the number went down without a hitch and didn't silver.

With the decals all on and the model wiped down I was literally in the "bottom of the ninth" as I had less than a full day to finish the model. At this time and prior I cleaned up all the little parts and assemblies and worked on them. Things such as the propeller blades and spinner were readied and painted. For the spinner I used Gunze H-14 Orange which was preceded by a quick squirt of their H-11 Flat White. The landing gear units and wheel rims were painted with more of the RLM 76 and for the tires I called up an old friend.......Testors Rubber in the little square bottle. This color worked out great (but needed a little thinning as it was a bit thick) and I liked the subtle look of it. I remember using a couple of decades ago for aircraft tires and hadn't used it since.

Last Bits:

Normally I like to do a wash over a second coat of gloss clear over the decals and then seal everything in with a flat coat etc. I was deliberating on what to do and knew it was going to be next to impossible for all this to dry given the time that I had left. So I used a method I hadn't used in years for accenting panel lines.......the Mk.1 pencil! This didn't take too long, just go slow and make sure you have the sharpened point of your pencil deeply seated in the panel line and just slowly follow along with it. Before long I was finished and also glued on the antenna mast. A coat of Testors Acryl Clear Flat (which I also hadn't used in a while) was sprayed on to seal everything in. While this product is nice to work with, sometimes I feel it can leave a model a little "too flat" looking and leaves no remnance of a slight sheen which some aircraft involved in the war had. Not everything was "dead flat", just look at some photos in your books.

One the model was dry and safe to handle I removed the masking from the canopies and painted the wheel wells with more of the Humbrol Metalcoat aluminum color. The propeller assembly and spinner were glued together and set aside. The landing gear assemblies were attached at this time then I retired for the evening. With only a few things left to do on the day of the due date the pitot tube was glued in place and the wingtip lights were painted. Model Master Chrome Silver as a base followed by clear red, green and blue from Tamiya. The exhaust tubes on the bottom of the fuselage were painted with a suitable brown color and a bit of chipping added with a silver pencil. To get rid of or hide some of the nasty silvering that had occurred with most of the decals on the fuselage I went back and forth with both upper colors and dry brushed around the silvering. In some spots you can see the work that was done and I was disappointed with that. In some ways it gives the airframe a more "patchy" appearance though so I lucked out a bit too. Lastly a little bit of pastels were used to dirty things up a bit and with that the model was finished.

Conclusions:

This kit really turned out to be a fun little build. Excellent engineering and great fit gave me next to zero problems. Not only did I manage to finish the kit on time for a friendly group buffalo build but I also enjoyed it even if I had to burn the midnight oil a few times. I probably could have done a little more weathering too but that could always be added later if I want. Having a built Buffalo in my collection only makes me want to do more of them and other versions, it's such a cool little airplane. This build was also fun as it was a fresh build and thus a break from the stack of started kits too. One of my friends who also built the same kit for our little challenge reported having the same problem getting the rear canopy to fit so as the old adage says.....measure twice cut once! Hasegawa have reissued this kit which is a good thing as it used to be hard to find. I wish they would also reissue the US Navy F2A-2 version as well. Would I recommend this kit? With both thumbs up!

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