Emhar 1/72 McDonnell F3H-2 Demon

EMHAR 1:72 MCDONNEL F3H-2/F-3B DEMON

Reviewer: Trevor Boxall (rec.models.scale)
Kit Review submitted: 8 October 2008

Kit Details:

Emhar #3001 - 1/72 F3H-2/F-3B Demon

Aircraft History:

The F3H was planned as a high-performance day fighter which included swept wings and lateral fuselage intakes for the single turbojet engine mounted in the rear fuselage. It served the US Navy between the mid 1950's and 1960's as an unspectacular aircraft plagued by lots of performance and engine problems.

In the 1950's there was generally a perception that US Navy aircraft had to be inferior in performance to land based fighters, mainly due to the logistics of taking off/landing on a carrier. But the FH-1 Phantom and FH-2 Banshee dispelled this theory and suggested that there was no real valid reason that carrier based fighters had to be inferior in any way to their land based counterparts.

Enter McDonnell into the fray who proposed an XF3H-1 to a request for a carrier-based fighter with performance equal or superior to that of most land based fighters. By 1949 this proposal was supposed to prove the belief but for a variety of reasons it was to prove a costly exercise. The powerplant selected was a new Westinghouse XJ40, but failure to develop this engine to the design power output and reliability was the major factor in the ensuing costly delays for the F3H programme. Continual demands for better performance on the engine that really was doomed from the start probably contributed to several accidents and in the end the Navy relinquished and allowed an Allison engine to be installed. But it was too little too late.

A redesign of the aircraft followed which was aimed at allowing the 150 ordered production aircraft to be completed as all-weather night-fighter types. And in 1951 the first XF3H-1 prototype was flown but it was not until Christmas 1953 that the first production version F3H-1N was flown. This aircraft differed from the prototype by having APG-51 radar, four 20-mm cannon and underwing hard store racks. As explained above, this version was powered by the doomed Westinghouse J40 and after 11 accidents, including the death of two test pilots, production was halted at 58.

After the replacement of the engine to an Allison, the F3H-2 line of variants were produced and over 500 of these were built. Initial variants such as the -2N were equipped with first generation Sidewinder missiles but later with the F3H-2/F-3B variant, which also had a shortened tail, Sparrow AAMs were carried.

Initial deliveries of the -2 line of variants commenced in 1956 with VF-14 first equipped before production stopped in 1959. The Allison powered Demon continued to be hounded by various performance problems and it equipped 11 squadrons before being withdrawn from frontline service in 1964. This period meant that the Demon saw few, if any, combat operations as it was pressed into service too late to see action in Korea and retired likewise before Vietnam. Its career was cut short by newe generation of more capable carrier fighters, one of which is its bigger brother the F-4 Phantom. If there was one positive to take out of this programme it was that the Demon was plagued by so many problems, these were ironed out, pre-empted or otherwise dealt with more efficiently for later carrier-based fighters.

The Kit:

The box has aged and sagged and crumpled over time but the parts inside were still as good as day one. I can't remember if they were bagged or not as the kit was first fondled many moons ago. There are two main sprues of light grey injection molded parts along with two distorted canopy parts. Parts count would be around 80-85 on fairly soft older engineered plastic. Basically all the surface detail is engraved but has a mixture of shallow lines and Matchbox trench control surfaces and the detail is definitely not a strong point.

Instructions:

A large photocopied sheet provides the basis to build your kit and suffers from a lack of real detail. There are only a handful of assembly diagrams all of which are not really that specific in positioning and may be a little hard for novices to follow. Very basic and generic paint information is given, mainly restricted only to the external scheme and no reference to FS or paint brands whatsoever.

Construction:

The cockpit is sparsely detailed with barely much more than blobs of plastic for instrument panel and a blocky representation of the McDonnell ejection seats. Thankfully Airwaves has a set and I must have purchased one of these many moons ago and stuffed it in the box. The cockpit tub is installed into a front fuselage half, which is separated from the main body of the aircraft, along with the nose wheel bay. I found the fit a bit troublesome but I added in a bit more than what the kit provides so this probably accounts for same. I gave the cockpit an FS 36231 interior wash, whether it is right or not, stiff chedda!

The fuselage is made of two separate components, a forward cockpit unit which is placed together and then attached to the rear main body of the aircraft. The two fuselage sections are more or less split behind the intakes, no doubt to make it easier to engineer the intakes. This turns out to be a good thing, because the intakes are relatively easy to install and require only a small amount of sanding and filling. However, the interior intake plates are molded incorrectly and should be slanted. In spite of myself I left these plates as they were and had to live with the inaccurate depiction.

On the otherhand the nose radome does not fit very well because it is actually larger than the fuselage onto where it attaches. No amount of rotating the radome into position would fix this so several studious and careful sanding sessions followed - and I mean several sessions! I think I achieved a pretty good result in the end, managing to blend in the radome and still maintain a reasonable roundness.

Wings are split into upper and lower halves and a bit on the thick side, however, they do affix to the fuselage rather well and need only a small amount of filling at the joins. There is a minor step at the roots as well but nothing to get too concerned over. The one piece tailplanes affix nicely also, but needed a jig to dry in the right position overnight.

Stores are pretty basic in that you get a pair of crude Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles and drop tanks to attach. The F-3B version of the Demon which this model purports to represent is the definitive version of the Demon (in an attempt to solve many of its plagued problems) and thus dimensionally differs from other variants mainly in the shortened tail section. This version retained the provision to carry Sparrow missiles but did not deploy Sidewinders, so those missiles were relegated to the spares box! One could add some bombs or rockets as possible alternatives though.

The two piece canopy is a pretty poor fit it must be said, but with test fitting and patience a reasonable finish was achievable. The main area of concern is where the windscreen meets the fuselage, a small gap needs to be dealt with. The undercarriage section is again more akin to blocky bits of plastic than fine detailed parts of an aircraft but they do the job. The fit is not too bad here but like the tailplanes, you really need to leave overnight with some sort of jig to dry in the right position. The gear doors were also added to the non-detailed wheel bays.

The kit lacks a lot of real detail and so there was a bit of extra work opening up small vents, the trademark rear exhaust section on the upper fuselage, rescribing some lines and drilling out holes for guns. Wings and intake area were sanded back as a thinning out exercise as the molding is pretty thick and dated.

Colour Schemes:

Two US Navy examples in light gull grey over white scheme, typical of the mid 60's are provided for by the kit. Humbrols 129/130 were used for the respective colours and the nose radome was masked off and painted black. Usually of course where the nose radome fits better, you could paint this separately. Still, the masking exercise worked.

Decals:

Sadly I had to replace mine because they had aged pretty roughly over time and were no longer usable. On the original sheet there is only a minimal amount of stencilling and the colour register is typically a little blurry and bright to match the era these decals would have been printed. I found a Microscale sheet some time ago through another modeller which had a 1959, USS Independence, VFA-41 Black Aces example on it and that's how mine ended up.

Accuracy:

At best you get a basic replication of a Demon aircraft. It is undersized slightly in dimensions - particularly in the wings. It looks okay and if you put it in the modelling cabinet, a US Navy buff would easily see it as an F3H Demon - so I guess that is the most positive thing one can say about this kit in accuracy terms! From a negative point of view there are lots of detail issues, the windscreen and intakes are incorrectly shaped and the undercarriage is far too basic. Need to drill out lots of vents and holes to get a more detailed look, particularly with cooling vents along the spine.

Overall Recommendation:

It's the only injection molded Demon I am aware of in 72nd scale so if you want a Demon then this is it. For some reason I thought Matchbox did one but then realised later I was thinking of the F3D Skyknight. In spite of its age the kit goes together quite well, needs a bit of test fitting first, and the usual filling and sanding in places. Normally I probably wouldn't really recommend on the basis of such simplistic and aged detail but given its the only game in town then if you want a Demon this is it!

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