My thanks to Scale Aircraft Conversions for offering this item for review and to IPMS/USA for allowing me to review it.

Designed by the Curtiss Aircraft Manufacturing Company, the SB2C was a huge disappointment initially and for months to follow. It was structurally weak, exhibited poor handling characteristics, and was unstable in a number of flight conditions. But, the Navy and Curtiss stayed with the aircraft and made a number of design changes. The changes added nearly 3,000 lbs. to the aircraft and resulted in one of its not so endearing names - the Big-Tailed Beast. Finally the Navy had the plane they wanted. It became the Navy’s primary attack/bombing aircraft and was responsible for more Japanese targets destroyed than any other aircraft.

Scale Aircraft Conversions (SAC) has released a very nice set of white metal landing gear parts for the 1/72 Cyber-hobby or Academy SB2C Helldiver. These same parts will also fit the Cyber-hobby A-25A-5-CS Shrike. For the purpose of this review I used the Cyber-hobby SB2C kit.

The SAC parts are replacements for the kit parts: D20(D21) main struts and D2(D3) strut braces. SAC also includes a replacement tail wheel/strut. The main strut parts are installed in the wing slots exactly like the kit parts and should present no problem. However, the kit’s tail wheel is part of the fuselage molding (A6) and it will have to be removed in order to use the SAC part.

The kit parts are well molded, but lack the crispness of the SAC parts. There is just a little better definition of the surface detail on the SAC parts. Removal of the small kit parts from the parts tree and subsequent clean-up will take more time and effort than the SAC parts which will require a wee bit of smoothing themselves. All in all the SAC parts will make a nice replacement. Recommended.

Thanks to SAC and IPMS/USA