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Todd Pearson's F-104S


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very nice kit, well painted but with a mistake: while not widely known outside of Italy, F-104S from 37°Stormo/18°Gruppo were the only one in the bomber variant used as fighters, so they had the Vulcan gun but were unable to carry the Sparrows, just Sidewinders and gun.

This is how the story went: due to several accidents with Lybia during the '80s, Italy felt the need for a new fighter Squadron to cover the South and Sicily Island from Lybian intrudes.

For a few years fighters Squadrons from Northern Italy were rotated in Trapani AB, then, when the Tornado re-equipped 3 former F-104S bomber Squadrons, there were enought unused F-104S to built a new unit.

Unfortunately all these F-104S were in bomber configuration and trasforming them in full fighter-interceptor variand was too expensive. So these airframes only got Sidewinders rails instead of bombs and were used as point defense fighters.

It was only much later, when the F-104S/ASA-M become available that the 37°Stormo/18°Gruppo got his first interceptors without the gun. By that time the Sparrows were retired from service and the Aspide was also deemed unsuitable so they just used AIM-9L istead of AIM-9B.

Please note that each time you are building an Italian F-104 is better to ask an expert since Hasegawa kits (in all 3 scales) makes no difference between fighter and bomber variants and each Squadron used just one of the two variants.

Hope this is clear enought, as I wrote the kit is still a good looking one while not 100% hystorically correct.

Edited by Paolo Maglio
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