Building Hasegawa's XF5U-1 Flying Pancake

By Stuart Beatson

This kit is quite a departure for me as it is neither a Luft 46 kit, nor a Sci-Fi kit but is an experimental American aircraft that was built but never flew.

In 1939 Vought began a research on STOL capable aircraft and the V-173 was the result of this development. The V-173 had a special near circular flying wing shape with large propellers for forward flight, which in addition served as lifting rotors in hovering flight. The first flight of the V-173 was in 1942 and testing continued throughout the year. The US navy became interested in the VSTOL capability of the V-173 and the XF5U-1 was the next development phase of the aircraft's design. Construction of the XF5U-1 was completed at the end of 1944 however the navy terminated the program due to the arrival of the jet age. The XF5U-1 was scrapped before it ever flew.

The Stats of the XF5U-1:
Crew 1
Length 8.72m
Wingspan 9.91m
Height 4.5m
Engine 2 x P&W R-2000
Estimated top speed 762km/h

I started the kit with building up the cockpit, which consists of a seat, which comes in 4 parts, a cockpit floor, control stick and instrument panel. The seat was assembled and fixed to the cockpit floor as was the control stick and instrument panel. The whole assembly was then painted interior green. The padding on the seat was painted leather and black was used to pick out detail parts on the control stick and the instrument panel.

The cockpit sidewalls and rear bulkhead were then painted interior green and attached to the floor of the cockpit. The completed cockpit assembly was glued to the bottom half of the fuselage as were the intake fans, the top fuselage and bottom fuselage halves were then glued together.

The fit of the two fuselage halves together was satisfactory, there were quite a few gaps and some scraping had to be done to get the joins looking smooth. The propeller shafts which protrude from the front of the aircraft required quite a bit of work to get them to look round. The next parts to fix into place were the intake shrouds mounted at the front of the aircraft. The fit here was appalling, quite a lot of putty and sanding was needed to blend them in with the rest of the aircraft's leading edge. Some of the finely done panel lines and rivet detail was lost at this stage and had to be re-scribed. The propellers minus the blades were then fitted into the protruding shafts and fixed in place.

I decided at this point to leave the tail planes and the rudder assemblies off and to attach them after they were painted. The canopy was then attached and the model was prepped for painting.

At this time it was decided to do an in service colour scheme with the Australian air force as I am sure that the STOL capability would have been very handy with the short jungle airstrips of New Guinea or Borneo.

An all over green scheme was painted on using Testors Acryl Euro Green, which is a pretty close approximation of the dark green the RAAF used during WWII. The rudders and tail planes were painted white, as were the propellers. The wheel wells were masked off and painted silver as was the assembled under carriage. Next came the propellers, which were painted black, the gear doors and all the antennas. Finally a coat of flat clear was applied to the whole model before the application of the decals.

I chose some generic Aussie Decal sheets with RAAF roundels some serial numbers and nose art. The Roundel on the underside was a real challenge to fit into place, as part of it had to be applied to the gear door. This meant cutting the decal into three pieces.

And so it was done. The model was quite an enjoyable build and my only complaint was the bad fit of the forward engine shrouds at the front of the aircraft.

Anyone interested in building the V-173 prototype can now get hold of the Sword kit in 1/72 scale.

Editors note: An excellent reference for this plane is the Ginter Books Naval Fighters No.26 Chance Vought V-173 and XF5U-1 Flying Pancakes. And for the really geeky amongst us...The molds for this model were originally made by another Japanese company called HobbySpotU.

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