This is the not well known or
publicized CF-104N Sea Starfighter. In 1967 Canada voted in a loony leftist who
decided to pretty much decimate the Canadian Military with cost cuts to provide
money to stuff that (for the most part) was of benefit to Canadians. The Royal
Canadian Navy was told to scrap its one remaining aircraft carrier, CV-22
Bonneventure.
Now, admittedly we had not flown fighters off it for some time. Well
unless of course we remember the 2 nuclear 120,000 tonne vessels Canada secretly
owned and operated our ultra secret squadrons of Tomcats, Skyhawks, Hawkeyes and
other stuff from. But, I did not tell you about that. Truth be told, our looney
leftist Prime Minister at the time, famous for wearing roses in his lapel while
"secretly" doing pirouette's behind the Queens back during social
functions was actually a closet dictator with delusions of grandeurs.
His two secret carrier battle groups did all kinds of things to bug the
Americans. Cuban missile crises, burning down the white house in the war of 1812
(they used time travel like in the Final countdown), Berlin block aids, all that
cold war with Russia stuff.......It was all due to Pierre's secretive navy.
Now, 120,000 tonne carriers and associated carrier battle groups are hard
to hide. But we did it well for some 40 years. You Yanks never did hear about
them did ya?
DID YA!!!!!???????
Well, sometimes, a full carrier battle group was too big so Pierre sent in
the ULTRA secret weapon, the CF-104N SeaStarfighter. Number one, it was one
pilot and one plane. The 40,000 crew on the carrier battle groups were
becoming hard to keep quiet so once in a while we had to resort to our version
of ultra secret warfare.
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The best thing about the
SeaStarFighter was its ability to park anywhere. These were highly used in
coastal regions of the country as we figured the yanks must have found our
dozens of secret ICBM sites with their 4 squadrons (each) of defending
F-15s and Tornados in the central part of Canada. But ya never did. DID
YA???????
The two squadrons of CF-104Ns used around 30 planes each, one ultra
secret battle group on each coast. VF-870 was one of the disbanded Banshee
squadrons that where given the SeaStarfighter mission. Truth be told, they
also were a CF-14 squadron on the HMCS Lestor B Pearson but we just
had SO many squadrons of fighters some squadron names had to be used two
or three times.
One thing really neat about the Seastarfighter was the rear
"deck" at the back of the pontoons. Handy for a rest
after a hard days flight.
Put out a couple Muskoka chairs and a case of beer and you got
yourself a mobile weekend cottage.
The model itself is a combination of
a Hasegawa F-104S Starfighter, Hobby Craft Otter floats and a Hasegawa F-16B for
support beams and other stuff like the fuel tanks. The main part of the F-16B
was given to Elmo for his own major conversion project. The decals came from a
combination of IPMS Canada Navy decals and Belcher Bits spares.
Shawn
"phantom" Weiler
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