Early in the war, the US Navy was very concerned about providing air coverage in the event of the loss of its carriers, or in areas removed from the "front lines", where the carriers were needed, and which didn't have existing airfields. Floatplane versions of most of the Navy's front-line types were ordered for testing, however with the shipyards turning out escort carriers faster than expected and with the Navy Seabees setting records for building new airfields, the idea of floatplane fighters and bombers was dropped. Just as well, as those large floats incurred a serious performance penalty.

Leave it to Valom to grace us with an injection-plaastic kit of a one-off prototype that most of us never thought we would see. Markings are for the one and only TBD-1A as well as a "normal" wheeled Devastator of VT-8 at Midway.