Nifty Fifties TBM-3W

[Mick]

Fans of the nifty fifties will like this new one from A.F. Scrub: a Grumman TBM-3W "Guppy" Avenger AEW bird.

It's at FlightSim.com, where it's listed as an FSX plane, but the fine print says it's also good in FS9.

http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/fslib....ght&fid=184097

[Mick]

I just uploaded two new skins for the TBM-3W, plus an enhanced version of the original one.

It wasn't easy to find references for this bird! Mr. Google could only find a handful of pictures, and most of them looked very much alike. One of the images Mr. Google turned up was a profile drawing that was apparently used as the model for the stock textures. Alas, the profile artist left off some markings, so I added them. I also changed the marking to the Navy's standard style (or semi-standard, as it was of some planes, including the TBM-3Ws I painted, and I painted the radome white to match the photo of the plane that I found in a book.

My extensive library of modeling reference material didn't offer much more than the web. I found the above-mentioned photo of the plane depicted by the stock textures and the incomplete profile on the web, another plane from the same unit but painted to an earlier markings standard, and one other that didn't look all that different from the others, but at least it carried a squadron insignia to dress it up.

My research left me with two impressions. One is that the few TBM-3Ws that were photographed all looked pretty much alike, and the other is that hardly anyone who served in the TBM-3W squadrons owned a camera.

Anyway, for what they're worth, they just went up the pipe and should appear on the download list presently.

Here's one:

[Scale Dail]

Bravo Mick! And Mr. Scrub! This is a neat one!