One of Quickboost’s latest products is this set of three 1/48th scale headrests for the F6F Hellcat. Although the recommended kit is Eduard’s, I’m sure this would easily work on Hasegawa’s kit or even the old Arii/Otaki (or even the Monogram if you are feeling adventurous or nostalgic!).

As best I can determine, the middle headrest on this set (with the narrower width) was for use in the -3 (and early -5) Hellcats that carried the small windows aft of the pilot. The other two headrests without this narrower section are identical except for the size of the headrest padding.

The molding is very crisp and in a grey/green colored resin. The accompanying drawing of the set, along with photos on the web, shows that a vertical ‘bar’ should be present on the sides of the pour stub, presumably to offer some protection to the pieces. These bars were missing on my copy, but the headrests themselves were in perfect shape.

As usual with Quickboost, these pieces are meant to be a drop-fit replacement for the kit’s part. In this case, one would have to remove the headrest section of the rear cockpit bulkhead in the Eduard kit and replace it with one of these headrests. Interestingly, the Hasegawa kit has this section already molded separately from the bulkhead (and provides guidelines to remove a section of the sides for the -3). I included photos of both the Eduard and Hasegawa headrests next to the Quickboost product – note, the Hasegawa piece is the separate one.

The Hellcat had a series of small tweaks throughout its career. Although there are distinctly noticeable differences from the F6F-3 to the -5, within these variants there were also many small changes – and these changes include the headrests. Quickboost nicely provides for several alternatives by offering 3 different versions in this little set.

Highly recommended.

Thanks to Quickboost and IPMS/USA for providing the review sample.