Pro Resin 1/72nd Douglas BTD-1 "Destroyer" By Jodie Peeler

History

The ill-starred Douglas Destroyer was originally designed as a two-seat scout/dive bomber meant to replace the SBD Dauntless. A sturdy, gull-winged airplane powered by a Wright R-3350 engine, the XSB2D-1 first flew in April 1943. When the Navy changed its requirements to stipulate a single-seat dive and torpedo bomber, Douglas reconfigured the Destroyer into the single-seat BTD-1. Though 28 BTD-1s were built, the type never entered operational service. However, the BTD-1's design led to the successful AD Skyraider, rugged workhorse of the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Only one BTD-1 survives today; after many years of display at Florence, SC, it is now undergoing restoration at the Wings of Eagles museum at Elmira-Corning, NY.

Pro Resin Models, which recently introduced an injection-molded series of Curtiss Jenny biplanes in their Olimp line, has done a series of Destroyers in its Pro Resin line. These kits include the original XSB2D-1, the BTD-1, and the hybrid jet/prop XBTD-2. For those who can't get enough of interesting but obscure experimental and short-lived types, the Destroyer kits are good news indeed.

Pro Resin's BTD-1 represents an aircraft with a three-bladed prop and the big prop spinner (some pictures of BTD-1s show them with four-blade props with small spinners). The kit consists of 46 resin parts, 18 photoetched parts, a single vac-formed canopy, a film underlay for the instrument panel, and a decal sheet. The kit is broken down in the usual manner, with separate fuselage halves and a conventional wing join. The wings are well-cast single-piece units with very good wheel well detail and thin trailing edges. All parts feature finely scribed panel lines. My sample had several air bubbles on the bottom of the fuselage, and the front surfaces of each wing also had many tiny bubbles; some judicious application of Mr. Surfacer should fix those. A quick dry-fit showed no major problems, although the mating surfaces of each fuselage half will require careful sanding to knock off some goofy raised areas, probably from where the molds met. The fuselage wing roots feature little holes for pins on the ends of the wings. However, the wings appear to mount to these holes about 1 mm too far back! The wings also don't quite fit flush, so some work with files and sanding sticks will save lots of filling later on. No engine detail is present inside the massive one-piece cowl. This isn't a problem if you use the kit-supplied prop, but if you want to build yours as one of the aircraft with the four-blade prop and small sinner, you'll need to figure out a way to represent an engine and the different prop. Even with this huge casting up front, you'll probably need a good bit of weight to keep the finished model on its nose gear.

Detail of the kit is good. The resin cockpit tub features no console detail; as is usual on these limited-run kits, it's supplied on the photoetched sheet. The landing gear doors are supplied in resin, and are nicely detailed, but one wonders how they'll fare over time. The resin dive brake frames didn't survive the trip well, and were smashed to pieces in my kit (no hassle, since I plan to build this kit with the dive brakes stowed). The resin landing gear struts will probably not stand up under all this weight, so consider drilling them through and implanting brass rod. The photoetched sheet is thin but nicely done, with cowl flaps, dive brakes, interior details and other fine details. There's only one vac-formed canopy in the kit, and its cut line is a little soft, so be very careful when you cut it out and fit it to the model.

Decals give the builder two options: the first BTD-1 in its tri-color 1943 scheme, and a BTD-1 of the Naval Air Test Center in 1947 in an overall Glossy Sea Blue scheme. If these decals are like those in many Eastern European kits, they'll stick promptly to the first surface they meet, and will need to have a saliva undercoat (ewww!) if you want to move them around on the model. Separate red bars are provided for the postwar national insignia. The decals appear well-printed, with no color or registration issues worth noting.

Pro Resin's BTD-1 looks like a nice, well-engineered resin kit, and those who are used to short-run multimedia kits should find no surprises. No accuracy problems are readily apparent in comparison to photographs. It should make for an unusual, but very pleasant, build.

My thanks to Matt Bittner for forwarding this review sample, supplied by Pro Resin.