AIRCRAFT: Grumman’s F5F Skyrocket started out as the company’s G-34 project in 1938. Some people thought the design was going a bit too far, since the US Navy was just starting trials with their first single-engined ship-board monoplane fighters and here was Grumman with a twin-engined proposal. The prototype XF5F-1 first flew on April 1^st, 1940, but by the time some of the major problems had been ironed out and modifications incorporated, it was into 1942 before it was ready for full testing. By that time Grumman was working on the design of the G-51 project (which would become the F7F Tigercat), so the XF5F-1 prototype was used to compile flight data for the new aircraft.

KIT PARTS: This is a fairly typical MPM kit of its time, so it features finely engraved panel lines, a radial sprue containing most of the smaller plastic parts, a small but good-looking decal sheet, vacuformed canopy, a small fret of photo-etched parts, a photographic and photoetched "sandwich" for the instrument panel, and a reasonably good instruction sheet. The kit box is sturdy enough and its contents are encased in a sealed plastic bag, with separate bags for the canopy and the photoetched fret. Everyone should be familiar with the concept of the limited-run kit and associated quality, so I won’t repeat the usual caveats.

The main parts fit quite well together at test run stage, and looked accurate against plans. The tail wheel is much too small, it should be the size depicted on MPM’s box art and on the instruction sheet plans. The photoetched fret contains a number of parts which are also provided as plastic, so you have a choice of which ones to use. The grade of plastic used is hard enough to be polished but soft enough to be easily worked and sanded. The vacuformed canopy in my kit has a couple of small dimples on it, but these may disappear under a coat of gloss varnish.

INSTRUCTIONS: The instruction sheet is A3-size folded in the middle to produce four A4 pages. Front page contains a brief history on three languages (Czech, English and German), there is a parts tree layout diagram, a 6-part construction sequence (graphic only, no text except a few colour call-outs) and the back page is the colour & marking diagram. Basic colour scheme for the prototype is given as "silver grey" fuselage and tail, and "yellow" upper wings, although I think aluminium dope would be more appropriate for the fuselage/tail areas with Chrome Yellow for the wing.

I’ve seen worse instructions, but these should be easy enough for any experienced modeller to follow, and steps 3 and 6 show assembled relationships of the parts of the interior and the engine nacelles respectively. Even so, anyone building this kit should have some photos of the original aircraft to hand, especially for the undercarriage layout. A rather faded sketch of the interior appeared in the Fall 1996 "Kitbashing Special" edition of Scale Modeler, and this could be very handy for superdetailing as the kit’s interior is fairly basic given the rather large and clear canopy sitting over it.

CONSTRUCTION: The interior consists of a floor with moulded-on pedals, a seat, control stick, blanking plate behind the seat, and a "sandwich"-type instrument panel. A subsequent stage of assembly also features the headrest and rollover protector. Before putting the interior inside the fuselage, I had to test fit all the components before applying any glue. The parts will fit well, but only after some trimming. The instrument panel sandwich looks good, but is not very easy to attach inside the fuselage halves. It’s no major drama, it just takes a bit of thought and makes you appreciate your years of modelling experience.

All the parts of this limited-run kit will need careful trimming and test-fitting prior to gluing, and some degree of filling and sanding afterwards. The fuselage has cut-outs at the front underside for the wings and at the upper back for the twin-fin tail section. I very carefully made sure these areas were symmetrical to avoid high/low syndrome, and test-fitted the parts frequently until I was fairly sure they all looked right. Through a combination of luck and skill these sections needed very little filler.

On this model, the wing is in 4 pieces; a one-piece top, and a bottom comprising a centre-section and two outer panels. The wing top has a line guide showing where the fuselage is to be mounted, and the bottom centre-section has a raised and rounded section representing the bottom of the forward fuselage. When I assembled the wings I put the lower outer panels against the top first and then trimmed the centre panel to fit in between them. Mistake: the top and bottom fuselage guides don’t quite line up. If you make this kit, put the bottom centre section under the wing top first, then the outer panels, and it should all line up.

The engines are basic but workable; the main problem is fitting them into the nacelles. The diameter of the engine pieces is smaller than the interior diameter of the nacelles, so they rattle around. I glued a thick plastic backing plate piece to the back of each engine and trimmed and sanded until I had a snug fit in the nacelles.

The undercarriage is also quite basic, about on par with early Airfix or Frog, ie a couple of discs attached to sticks with projections. At least the scissor links are photo-etched. But the major problem is the lack of attachment points inside the wheel wells and vague instructions as to exact placement. There are things that look like blanking pieces that go horizontally into each wheel well, so I mounted them as best I could and drilled holes into them to take the u/c legs. This again took a lot of test fitting to ensure the wheels did not sit too high or low; the instruction sheet shows a side view of the aircraft wheels-down, but does not say if it is in the air or on the ground.

The rest of the construction was relatively hassle-free, but watch out for the very tiny photo-etched parts that still need to go on.

VERSIONS: The kit decals are for the prototype, aircraft serial number 1442. So far as I know this was the only XF5F-1 built and flown, and the kit’s configuration is the early design with the short nose. I airbrushed the whole model matt pale grey as an undercoat, then painted the top of the wings in Chrome Yellow. This was then masked and everything else was painted aluminium dope, including the engine nacelles. For the walk-way panels on either side of the nose I used black decal sheet, then applied a thick covering of matt varnish by hand over the dried decal to make it look like worn rubber.

DECALS: In keeping with the prototype’s markings the kit decals are small and basic. Just four tri-colour stars, two serial numbers, two "XF5F-1" and two "US Navy" markings is all you get. The printing looks good and is in register, as you would expect from Propagteam, but the decal film looks very thin. I gave the decal sheet a shot of varnish to beef it up just in case, and had no problems.

OVERALL: As with most limited-run kits, don’t buy it unless you are experienced and have a definite liking for the particular aircraft being kitted. For a twin-engined plane it’s quite small when made up, but I enjoyed making it; then again, I would have enjoyed it even more if it had been in 1/48 scale (duck and cover, and wait for incoming!).

REFERENCES:
"US Naval Fighters — Navy/Marine Corps 1922 to 1980s" by Lloyd S Jones (Aero Publishers, 1977)
"The American Fighter" by Enzo Angelucci with Peter Bowers (Orion Books, 1987)
Grumman XF5F-1 Skyrocket article by Bob Rice (Scale Modeler Kitbashing Special, Fall 1996)