Skull Leader

Thanks for the info, guys! I think I can safely pass on adding the wire to my jet and save the skills-flex for a future project lol

After conversing with st0rm on the matter and unable to find definitive answers, I turn to the masses.... I'm building an Arkansas KC-135A (of which, at best, ive found maybe 5 reference photos of the 189th during their ARW days) and upon doing more research of A models, it seems some had the aerial wire that ran from the tail to the front of the fuselage and some did not. I can't find any rhyme or reason for this... I know that thanks to modelers license, I can build it however I want but I'm left curious about it. It doesn't seem time-dependent.... later

Maybe he means he photographed them stateside

Looks like radome tan to me.

My name is bumpity.... pronounced with an umpity....

I have a list, but heaven only knows where I put it. Just look at photos from the time, it'll be obvious which ones are bravos and which ones are novembers. There's a pretty popular picture of 4 jolly Roger's phantoms flying in a diamond formation from late 1973. 3 of the jets in formation are bravos and 1 is a November. Easy enough to get bunos off that list. I dont think the Bs had names stenciled on the canopies

I mean... are you painting it yourself? Just make sure the decals are the right for the cruise you want to depict.

If you're doing a jet from 1965, make sure you get decals specific to that... the skull looked different

The tamiya F-4B it should be fine as-is. If you want to build a jet from the 73 cruise, some them had the RHAW blisters on top of the tail, you should research the specific airframe to figure out which ones.

They did not initally have the all black tail for their F-4B cruise. On the way home from Vietnam, they painted the tails all black. These can be identified by the yellow vagabond stripe on the fuselage (as opposed to black), black radome, and the USS Independence markings on the side. VF-84 lost 3 jets on that cruise ('64-'65) ALSO, according to Don Hanna, who commanded the squadron during their final phantom cruise, when they were switching from F-4Js to F-4Ns, they received a number of F-4Bs as placeholders until enough N models came out of rework, so there were all-black tail F

They re-pop another run every 10 years or so. Theyre at the nadir of their availability just now. You're better off chasing the meng sets unless you absolutely have to have the hasegawa set... in which case, be prepared to take out a small loan

The words "make sense" and Tamiya's marketing strategy seldom belong in the same sentence. Mr Tamiya builds what Mr. Tamiya wants most of the time. Here's the thing... there are a million 1/48 F-4 kits on the market (or at least, easy to find). None of them are outright terrible... the minimal-detailed esci/italeri kit, which still nails the shape of the C/D very well... the testors F-4S misses a few details, but again, very accurately captures the shape. Those are generally hailed as the worst two in the scale. Some of these kits require a little more elbow grease, bu

They come standard in the academy bombcat kit, the special F-14B/F-14D boxing of the Revell kit, as well as the Tamiya F-14D, presumably the GWH kit, and I believe there were resin ones in one or two boxings of the hasegawa kit (but just a couple that are long out of print) For aftermarket, I know the black box bombcat update set had some, and steel Beach did as well... beyond that, im not sure who else has some. The 1/72 hasegawa weapons sets have some, but they are curiously absent from the 1/48 sets. This list is by no means exhaustive, but its all the sources I ca

I've got the article bookmarked already 🙂 fantastic resource and much appreciated! I've got the means to draw my own decals, do that's not a huge concern either. I've got some idea of what I'm in for, I just know the Pete's Hangar kit would be a better starting point than nothing at all!

There's a pretty popular photo somewhere of a number of late VF-84 jets (post Desert Storm) in a dive releasing dumb bombs... also a popular series of photos from VF-84 (actually shot by a guy from VF-32 as I recall) showing 3 VF-84 Tomcats flying in formation showing the three major configurations for a tomcat (air to air, air to ground, recon), which also pre-date LANTIRN (though not by much). Somewhere in my collection, I've got photos of both a VF-51 and VF-111 Tomcat sitting on deck with bomb racks on the LAU-93s. I'll have to see if I can dig those up.