During 1971 VF-111 converted from F-8E Crusader to the Phantom F-4B. Theyhad a work up period aboard the USS Kitty Hawk before deploying on the USS Coral Sea for a 6 month deployment to South East Asia, here they chalked up 1 Mig 17 kill. In 1976 VF-111 converted to the F-14A with which they remained until the squadron disbanded in 1995.

  Originally this was Tamiya's 1/32 F-4J which has been converted into an earlier F-4B. Firstly I had to discard the upper wing sections, saving the flaps and slats and rebuild a new "flat" wing from scratch, including re-scribing and drilling the rivets to match the rest of the airframe. This had to be done because the F-4J like all other F-4's in this scale have the  bulged upper and lower wings which have to be removed to replicate an  accurate flat wing F-4B.

The sides of the fuselage had to be made good where the removal of the large bulged sections left a gap between wing and fuselage. New burner cans were added from an old Revell kit with some extra detailing to represent the earlier J79 GE-8 short afterburners opposed to the J79 GE-10 long afterburners supplied with the kit. The AN/APA-157 CW Illuminator under the nose was created from a 1/72 Mig 19 drop tank with some re-shaping, the tail top front and rear mounted APR30 Radar Homing/Warning System were built from scratch.

Some moving around of  components plus scratch building to represent an accurate F-4B cockpit, plus Paragon seats. Painted and weathered to represent the CAG aircraft of VF-111 (Sundowners) aboard USS Coral Sea during the last weeks of their 6 month combat tour in South East Asia during 1972. This particular aircraft had new drop tanks for the last weeks of the tour after dropping them over Haiphong during a CAP mission.

Overall an extremely difficult conversion, the original F-4J kit is superb and goes together well. Would I do it again? NO!, I'll wait until one of the kit manufacturers bring one out.

If you would like your product reviewed fairly and quickly by a site that has well over 175,000 visitors a month, please contact me or see other details in the Note to Contributors.

Back to the Main Page

Back to the Reviews Index Page