Much of the Vietnam War that involved the USN and USMC, was fought by the Skyhawk. The Marines operated in country, attacking targets in the South while the Navy operated from aircraft carriers and usually attacked targets in the North.

This particular sheet is the second of several that are dedicated to the A-4 of different versions that operated during the 1965-72 time period. There are 13 different schemes all of them in the light gull grey and white scheme. Note that the grey was matte while the white was gloss.

There is a nice mixture of USMC and USN options on this sheet. The majority of those are from VMA-311 with six different markings optons covering the time period from 1966-1970 These planes operated from Chu Lai. Also from Chulai is a lone VMA-214 option from the 1966-67 time period. This would be a good time to mention that one has to pay attention to the aircraft being modeled. There were subtle differences from plane to plane and AOA provides a well done list of items that may or may not have been on these planes. For instance, all but one of the options has the straight refuelling probe and some have small fin mounted antennas.

For the Navy , we concentrate on VA-22 with three options from two different carriers in the 1967-1970 time period. One of these is a colorful CAG bird. The other unit covered is VA-55 with three different carrier options. This also includes the one option with the cranked refueling probe.

Though not shown, there is an additional sheet that contains all the insignia and data markings. This is sheet 48-004 and can be purchased separately if you wish to do multiple aircraft from this set. The sheet is designed for the Hasegawa kit so if you want to try them on the ESCI or Monogram versions, there is no guarantee that the stripes and fin markings will be an exact fit.

Not only are the decals superbly printed, but the instructions are first rate and a 'yuge' help in getting a well done replica. This is a 'must have' for Vietnam era Skyhawk fans who build in 1/48 scale. 

January 2017

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Thanks to AOA Decals for the review sheet. You can find this sheet at this link, where you can also see profiles of each markings option.

If you would like your product reviewed fairly and fairly quickly, please contact the editor or see other details in the Note to Contributors.