The Grumman F4F Wildcat
By Chris Banyai-Riepl
Airframe & Miniature No 22
Author: Richard A. Franks
Publisher: Valiant Wings Publications
ISBN: 978-1912932351
Binding: Softcover
Pages: 208
Grumman made their naval aviation start with biplane fighters that featured retractable landing gear, a first for the US Navy. Those biplane successes led to the F4F Wildcat, a fighter aircraft that proved itself in the early stages of the Second World War and remained in service for the duration of the war. This latest book in the Airframe & Miniature series covers the Grumman Wildcat in detail, from those early pre-war days through to the export variants and even post-war usage.
This series splits the subject aircraft into two main sections: the airframe and the miniature. Starting with the airframe section, this covers the technical details of the Wildcat, from its origins through all its different variants. In typical fashion for this series, those variant chapters do an excellent job of showing just what the differences were between all the Wildcat designs. This is particularly useful once you start looking at the export variants, as those saw extensive yet subtle differences from the US Navy variants. This section also provides color profiles for the camouflage & markings section, which is a great way to show both the changes of US Navy camouflage patterns and the interesting unit markings worn by the Wildcat.
The Miniature section is where we get into the Wildcat in plastic, and here we are very well represented in the popular 1/72 and 1/48 scales with the Arma and Eduard kits, respectively. When you move outside of the top models in your favorite scale, the comprehensive list of Wildcat kits is very long as this has been a perennial favorite for decades. The Miniature section also includes a handful of build articles, showcasing those popular kits, and a very useful section that outlines all the changes you’d need to do to build any variant. Rounding out this section is a detail section that shows photos and drawings of all sorts of details of the Wildcat.
If you have picked up a recent new-tool Wildcat kit, this is the book to have. From all the variant documentation, colors and markings, and kit builds, this book checks all the boxes for a single source modeler’s reference on the Wildcat. My thanks to Valiant Wings for the review copy.