1/48 Hasegawa F-14B Tomcat

Gallery Article by Sal on Jan 27 2014

 

 

Tomcats were conceived and designed to be air superiority fighters but eventually evolved into strike fighters at the later half of their 30+ year service career. It is ironic that these beautiful birds killed more targets on the ground with their laser guided bombs & JDAMs than their air-to-air missiles ever did in the air. I believe US Navy Tomcats tallied less than 10 kills through the years. Early Iranian Tomcats claimed 159 air-to-air victories during the Iran-Iraq War (unconfirmed).

 

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This Tomcat depicts one of the aircraft that participated in the early stages of Operation Enduring Freedom, operating out of the USS Theodore Roosevelt Oct'01-Mar'02. Fightertown decals were used and GBU-24 bombs and associated launcher were cannibalized from a defunct Academy kit project.

I applied only light weathering and kept this bird fairly clean compared to how they often looked after months at sea. I didn't want the heavy weathering to detract from the natural design beauty of these aircraft. Enjoy!

Sal

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Photos and text © by Sal