1/72 Anigrand Douglas XA2D-1

Skyshark 

by Allan Wanta

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The Douglas A2D Skyshark was a turboprop-powered attack aircraft built by the Douglas Aircraft Company for the United States Navy. Work started in 1945, at which time the Navy did not have faith in jet-powered aircraft for carrier-based service. First flight was in 1950. The Skyshark began as a turboprop version of the AD Skyraider, but eventually was an entirely different airplane. Due largely to the failure of the Allison T40 program to produce a reliable engine, the Skyshark never entered operational service.

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  Doesn’t it bother you that some of the most promising aircraft designs, for one reason or another never makes it to the production stage? Take for example the BAC TSR 2, or the XP-57, or, and the list goes on. Whether due to money, or politics or whatever, some radical and potentially exciting designs never make it to the actual production line. Here in lies one of those designs, the Douglas XA2D Skyshark, the Skyraider on steroids. So far as I know, this kit has been kitted by Airmodel, Merlin, Rareplanes, Allyn and Microscale, Dynavector and now Anigrand. So, what did I think of this latest offering? Well…..read on.

  As with most of Anigrand resin kits, they come in a tidy cardboard box, mine came from Hong Kong directly after I saw it was slated to become available in the near future. So the near future is here and the kit came lickity-split to my post box. I’ve seen and have a few of these resin kits; this is the first one to actually get the nod to be built. You must have one book in order to fully appreciate building this model, Steve Glinters XA2D-1 publication.

  With book in hand, and kit laid out, I did what I hate doing, comparing scale drawings to the kit parts. Here’s what I came up with.

  The overall shape and size of the fuselage is very accurate, the only blip being the lower tail did not have the pronounced up-curve that cradles the tail hook, which was taken care of with a file and grit.  The wings are also good in shape as are the tail plane parts, so we do have a good looking Skyshark.  The downside is this; the kit can only be made as the first prototype BuNo. 122988, with the short rudder. The decals include this stencil but also give a number of decals which never saw application on the first prototype. All consecutive prototypes have a modified tall tail.

  The resin used is good quality and casting is well done, again some small holes and pin holes are filled in, but that’s the norm for Anigrand products. It took a whole 10 minutes to correct. What I did do was get a Hasegawa AD-6 kit and robbed the landing gear off of it for this build, the kit gear is something from another kit that are not accurate at all. The same could be said for the ejection seat which is under scale and not accurate for this era of kit. After looking at a number of Anigrand kits I feel these parts in the cockpit are very generic in nature, something to fill the void but not very accurately.

  Supplied in the kit are two wing fuel tanks and the belly tank, the later is the wrong shape and I’ve used the one from the Skyraider kit, it looks the part much better. The original Skyshark also had flap extension guides under the wings much as the Skyraider did, these are not present and should be scratch-built or as I did, cut them off the Hasegawa kit.

  The main components went together with little effort; wings tail plane and fuselage fit together very well. One niggely little area is the nose intakes for the engines, they need to carefully be fitted, take a little time to clean up the parts.  I’m impressed with Anigrands master makers, they know their stuff. Some say the panel lines are a bit deep, which is true, but it’s not something that a good coat of primer won’t fix. The standard Dark Sea Blue was applied to the overall surfaces and decals from the kit and small white stencils made on an ALPS printer thrown in to make the kit look busy. On top of it all a coat of urethane clear was shot, for the most part in an effort to lessen the depth of the panel lines and scribing.

  Overall I enjoyed this kit; the overall presentation is good and not at all difficult to assemble. However I also feel these kits are a bit more on the toy side of the hobby rather than for the hard-core builder, some of the parts as well as an overall lack of research into the subjects can be seen, like the decals being for later prototypes and the lack of a cockpit. I whole heartedly recommend getting this kit, as it went together easily and will make a welcome addition to my collection. This kit rates 8 out of 10 on the Fun-O-Meter, 9 out of 10 on ease of assembly, and 7 out of 10 for accuracy. Kudos to Anigrand for another wonderful kit!

Allan 

 

Photos and text © by Allan Wanta