by Tommy H. Thomason

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

The Best F8U-3 Monograph Now Available

Not too bold a claim, since as far as I know, it's the only one. However, it's got a lot of stuff in it on the F8U-3 and the Grumman D-118 that I'm sure you've not seen as well as coverage of the fly-off between the F8U-3 and the F4H. Steve Ginter doesn't have it up on his website yet but I'm sure it will be soon.


One omission (for another see my Naval aviation history blog here) is I failed to mention the Collectaire 1/48 F8U-3 kit in the Model Kits section. For a description, pictures of the model, price, and order information, go to this website.

As Christopher discovered (see his comment below), my three-view drawing on page 87 isn't 1/144 scale. I should have put a "scale" on it, which would have helped Steve get it the right size on the page, although that isn't as easy as you might think. In any event, it turns out to be about 1/135 on my copy. The dimensioned SAC three-view on page 92 also isn't as clear as I would like so here is a better reproduction. (Click on it for a bigger version.)

2 comments:

  1. Tommy,

    I've been a "fan" of yours since your Skyray article in the IPMS USA magazine many moons ago. I've just received the F8U-3 book and it has, of course, lots of fascinating stuff. I would have welcomed some larger scale drawings given the discrepancy you mention in others and models based on them. I have both the Anigrand (started) and Collect-Aire (unstarted) kits and the latter would appear to be 3/4" short given a full-size length of c.60'. I tried scaling up from your 1/144 drawing but that seems to come out at over 62'!
    I also can't seem to see the descriptions of the cover photos usually found in Stve Ginter's books.

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  2. See my mea culpa above on the "1/144" three-view. As for the cover captions, the one on the front cover and the middle one on the back cover are described on page 49. (Note that the auxiliary air doors are cracked open, when they would normally have been closed at this speed and configuration.) The upper one on the back cover is captioned on page 84. (The lower picture on page 84 is reportedly its departure for Edwards.)The lower one on the back cover is described in captions on page 85.

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