Pro Resin 1/72nd Douglas XBTD-2 "Destroyer" By Mike Whye

While I've used some resin parts on some kits before, the 1/72nd scale Douglas XBTD-2 Destroyer by Pro Resin (#R72-011) is the first all-resin aircraft kit that has landed in my hands. Actually, it's not all resin....there's a fret of photo-etch in the kit too...but for all purposes, this is an all-resin kit.

History

If you haven't heard of the XBTD-2 Douglas Destroyer, you have much in common with the rest of the world because it was not a well-known aircraft. In fact, it was quite an odd duck, even in its own day.

It began life as a BTD-1 a squat, low-sitting (even though it had tricycle landing gear), gull-wing aircraft which was powered by Wright R-3350-14 piston engine. It was designed to replace the Dauntless dive bomber. Although it was judged better than the Helldiver, the BTD-1's role came to an end with the end of World War II when the Navy cancelled the BTD-1 contract. In all, just 28 were built.

Nevertheless, Douglas took three BTD-1 airframes and, while leaving their original piston-powered engines in them, added a Westinghouse WE-19B jet engine into each, tucking the jet engine into the fuselage behind the cockpit. The altered airframes were called XBTD-2. As if the original airframe wasn't ugly enough, Douglas added an intake for the jet engine just aft of the canopy and, instead of the exhaust being ducted directly toward the rear as with all other jets, the designers gave the XBTD-2's tailpipe a downward slant, diminishing the plane's performance as well as searing the then-wooden decks of the American aircraft carriers.

Although the XTBD-2 was one of the U.S. Navy's first aircraft to use a jet engine, it was quickly passed over for other aircraft.

(Douglas claims that the BTD-1 served as the base for the AD Skyraider which the company later developed as a successful attack aircraft that achieved fame in Korea and Vietnam. Despite the company line, I have a hard time believing the connection; after all, the BTD-1 had tricycle landing gear while the Skyraider was a tail-dragger, the BTD-1 had gullwings that joined the fuselage about halfway between the top and the bottom of the fuselage while the wing of the Skyraider came out from the lower portion of the fuselage; and the fuselages of the two types of aircraft simply don't look anything alike.)

What's in the Box

The resin parts come in two plastic bags with zip strips so you can open and reseal them. That's a nice touch for keeping all the parts in one spot. One bag holds the major components such as the wings, fuselage halves, tail, engine housing, horizontal stabilizers and so on. The smaller bag, which was actually also in the bigger one, has the smaller, finer pieces such as landing gear doors and struts, control stick, wing cannon and many others. In all, the kit has 50 resin pieces.

Besides a vacu-form canopy, the kit also has a nicely made fret of photo-etch items including engine cowling flaps, dive brake fences, seat belts and instrument panels; the fret is also in a resealable plastic bag. Be careful when opening this bag--it contains the film for the instrument panel which can be easily missed.

Rounding out the kit is a small sheet of decals which are no more than four stars and bars, the three markings for the propeller blades, a couple of serial numbers and a couple of very small tail numbers--that's it folks, a total of 11 decals. I wish there were more.

There's also a clear vacu-form canopy.

All parts appear to be made very well. All lines in the resin are recessed and crisp. The resin pieces have stubs and/or flash that need to be removed; this means lot of sanding and grinding and do wear a breathing mask to protect your lungs when doing these tasks. Caution: one must be careful about what to remove though; for instance, what looks like two small stubs on the inside of each wing are actually locator pins to help position the wing correctly on the fuselage so you would not want to trim or sand those off. Also, if you haven't handled resin before, be aware that, when thin, it's fragile compared to styrene. I noticed a tiny nick in the thin trailing edge of one wing (which I can easily correct) and a small arm of a dive brake is missing, apparently broken off even though it was protected in the small bag (again, I can easily make a replacement out of extremely thin sheet styrene).

By the way, instead of the customary upper and lower wing parts as are usually found in non-resin kits, each wing here is complete.

About the only fault I noticed in the kit is that very small, fragile segments of the dive brakes, which are meant to be shown extended, had broken off and were missing, leaving me to create their replacements out of thin styrene sheet.

As I mentioned, this is the first full-resin kit I've handled and, from what I have read of others who have reviewed resin kits, I looked for any imperfections in the casting of the resin (air bubbles and grainy textures, for example) and found no problems. The casting of the resin pieces is very well done. As a matter of fact, if you look really close at the major pieces such as the fuselage and wings, you'll see rivets....so rivet counters should be happy with this kit.

Instructions

The instructions are simple. One drawing serves as a key for the number of each part while four more drawings are basically exploded diagrams showing what part goes where with notes about what to paint the parts. Within each of those exploded drawings, there is no explanation as to if pieces should be glued into place in any particular sequence, so be sure to dry-fit the pieces and note how one part might need to be glued before or after something else. This is no kit for beginners.

As for a paint scheme, there's a left profile and a split over-under plan view. What's interesting here is that the instructions call out for a "midnight blue" but also note that this is Model Master 1511 (although 1511 may be in the Model Master lists, I could not find such a reference number in the Model Master line so I'm going to speculate that Pro Resin meant dark sea blue, which was used on lots of Navy aircraft in WWII and just after the war; that's FS15042 which is made by Model Master and other model paint companies). According to the instructions, the "midnight blue" is on the upper wings and on top of the fuselage but it's shown to then fade to the white of the undersides in a soft demarcation; however there's a sharp delineation between the white and "midnight blue" on the bottom of the wings.

On the box top art and on the limited photos I have found, the aircraft appears to have had a tri-color scheme of dark sea blue, intermediate blue and white, or light gray. I would guess that if you can use whatever color scheme you want and get away with it, including a solid dark sea blue or a gull-gray and white arrangement should you choose--both of which I think would look great on this post-WWII aircraft.

Conclusion

Overall, this appears to be a great kit and is a good one to introduce anyone to the world of all-resin kits. So get out your super-glues and have at it because you'll like it. I highly recommend it for how well it's made as well as the unique aircraft it portrays.

My thanks to Pro Resin for this review kit.