A P47-D Thunderbolt is anchored overhead with a P51 Mustang appearing to fly below it.
PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — A Parkersburg man has donated more than 40 detailed scale-model warships, planes and submarines to the Veterans Museum of the Mid-Ohio Valley.
Mark Suek has been a modeler for more 50 years and assembled the models from kits, some from companies no longer in business.
“I detail them and I use federal standard paints,” Suek said.
Federal standard paints allow the model to look like it would from the specific period of history, Suek said.
Gary Farris, curator at the museum located on Seventh Street, has added about a half dozen of the Suek models to the displays. Farris replaced a model he assembled with the Suek version.
“It looked better than mine,” he said.
Most of the models are of World War II and Korean War eras. Using kits made by diferent manufacturers including Revell or Monogram, which is now out of businesses, familiar names in model makers circles, he has assembled fighters and medium bombers, battleships and submarines, mostly American, but some German.
Among the models donated are the USS Missouri, the battleship where the representatives of Japan signed the papers of unconditional surrender that ended World War II in the Pacific. Suek also made a model of PT-109, the torpedo boat captained by President John F. Kennedy in World War II.
He donated a model of the USS Arizona, the battleship moored at Pearl Harbor and sunk by Japanese warplanes on Dec. 7, 1941, which led to the United States declaring war on the Axis powers and entering the war. The Arizona and 1,100 sailors killed in the attack remains on the bottom the harbor.
The historical research into the models is as important as their assembly, Suek said.
“There’s a lot of research, which actually takes a lot longer than the actual building of the model,” he said.
Most of the kits are made in England or Japan. Some of the other makers were Testors, Airfix, Matchbox, Tamiya, Hasegawa and 21st Century.
The planes are in scales of 1/72, 1/48, 1/32 and 1/18 and the ships and subs also are of different scales.
Suek said he does his work without new conveniences, such as an air brush. The detail can become minute, such as painting the gauges in the cockpit of the airplanes, of which he used the tip of a toothpick, he said.
“I’m old school,” he saide.
A handful of the models were put on display, Farris said. Models have been used in the displays of U.S. Navy admiral’s uniform, an air force pilot and in a display in the Vietnam area, he said.
The others are kept in storage and are available when he needed, said Farris, who is appreciative of the gift.
“Very much so,” he said.
Suek and his wife, Dreama, have been reducing the amount of things they have in anticipation of retirement and moving south “where there is more sunshine and little better beaches,” he said.
Not all of the collection was donated to the museum. Suek kept the models of the P-40 Warhawk, P-51 Mustang, P-38 Lightning, F6F Hellcat, F4U Corsair, F-100 Super Sabre, F-8 Crusader, F-84 Thunderjet, F-105 Thunderchief, F-102 Delta Dart and F-106 Delta Dagger, and the planes his eldest son, M. Aaron Suek, has been involved with during his 13 years of active duty in the United States Air Force. The junior Suek is stationed at Beale Air Force Base in California and has flown the F-15 Eagle, F-22 Raptor and U-2 spy plane, besides receiving a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star with Valor in combat in Afghanistan two years ago.