Grumman F6F-5K Hellcat [1:144]

something something Hellcat drone. Finished in December, but I didn't post it back then because I wasn't fully satisfied with the outcome.

Two years ago I bought myself a collection of Revell's 1/144 U.S. carrier aircrafts from the Pacific War: Wildcat, Hellcat, Corsair and Dauntless. I wanted to finish them on a single stand that'd mimic the carrier deck, but in the end, I screwed up the last two and they were no longer aviable in the shop after that.

I still consider finishing the Wildcat, but in the meantime, I've stumbled upon pictures of bright-red Hellcats with colourful tails, and discovered that in the late 1940s, several of these machines were converted into remotely controlled "drones", used mainly as targets for the anti-aircraft practice.

In 1946, several of these RC planes were used for the Operation Crossroads, the first post-war nuclear tests, conducted in the Bikini atoll. The first test, "Able", was an air-dropped bomb, whereas the second, "Baker", was detonated under the water surface; both tests were primarily performed to asses the damages that the nuclear bombs would do to Navy ships. "Able" did severe damage to the surface units, but the "Baker's" results were far more dangerous: the blast created a surge of radioactive water and steam which severely contaminated the ships. Had there been any crew on them, they'd all die from radiation poisoning.

That is why, knowing the danger of sending manned craft to the blast area, the US Navy used the Hellcat drones to collect samples from the most dangerous zones, including the mushroom clouds themselves. Remotely operated from the mother aircraft, the drones were flying at various altitudes, then piloted back to land bases. Though one of the Hellcats crashed before the "Able" test, the operation was a major success: for the first time in history, a radio-controlled, full-sized aircraft took off, flew and landed without anyone onboard; in the previous attempts, the pilot would take off the aircraft, then bail out; and in cases of suicide flying bombs, the plane wasn't landing, but crashing on target.

Exactly this happened during the Korean War, when in August 1952, several aircraft from the Guided Missile Unit 90 took off from the aircraft carrier USS Boxer and flew towards the bridges in North Korea, guided by a AD-2Q Skyraider mother plane. The first attack on the Hamhung bridge missed its target, but the Chungjin attack on August 29th was a success, as the aircraft fitted with a 1.000 kg bomb slammed itself into a bridge. Other drones were less successful, as the early TV guidance was not efficient enough to steer the drone with the neccessary precision. No such attacks were later conducted until custom-made drones started to appear.

On August 16th 1956, a Hellcat drone caused one of the biggest embarrassments in the history of the U.S. Air Force. The plane took off from the Point Mugu airbase to take part in the testing of new air-to-air missiles, as a target. However, due to unknown causes, the aircraft slipped out of control and started heading towards the Los Angeles. Wary of the consequences of potential air crash in that region, the USAAF sent two F-89D Scorpion fighters, each armed with 104 "Mighty Mouse" unguided missiles. A single hit from this weapon, designed to fire a barrage of rockets against the Soviet bombers, could obliterate the drone.

However, as the Hellcat spiraled out of control, it would divert over the populated area, and the pilots had to wait until it flies to some more remote location before they could attempt the shootdown. But as they finally saw a window of opportunity and took their firing positions, they've discovered that their onboard aiming computers were not working and they could not fire their rockets. As they switched to manual mode, they further noticed that... the aim sights had been removed from their planes. With no sights and no computers, the pilots had to fire "on the guts' telling", and the results were catastrophic.

Out of 208 rockets fired from the Scorpions, not a single one scored a hit on an erronously flying drone. Worse still, the rockets - each carrying 2,7 kg warhead - started falling from the sky around the town of Palmdale, setting fire to the bushes, private property, businesses and destroying at least two cars. Over 1000 acre of ground was burned by the HE warheads, and it took the efforts of 500 firefighter to bring the fire under control. Miraculously, no one was killed or seriously injured.

Meanwhile, the drone had simply ran out of fuel, spiraled towards the ground, and crashed several miles off the Palmdale Airport. Its parts were discovered in 1997 and were identified by its serial numbers. The "Battle of Palmdale", as the incident came to be known, showed that the USAAF had paid too much faith in the new technologies, since if they hadn't removed the gunsights from the Scorpions, the "battle" would be over in minutes even if the computer still malfunctioned.

The drone here, the "Yellow 12", was supposed to represent one used during the Operation Crossroads, though due to the small size, mediocre detailing and the condition of the model (that had been painted and cleaned several times) it is not an accurate representation, just a general image. The USN markings came from one of the 1/144 sets, I don't remember which, but they're not the one from the Hellcat (there were not cat mouths on the decal sheet; I guess they came from the Corsair set), and the numbers come from spares.

Nothing extraordinary, to be honest. I just decided that, if I can't finish it in the US Navy markings anymore, I could try something unusual.