1/72 Hasegawa McDonnel Douglas F-4G Phantom II

Gallery Article by Jean-Charles Goddet on Mar 4 2013

 

 

    Today I present to you my 1/72 Hasegawa kit KA8 USAF F-4G Phantom II "Wild Weasel" with decals from AIRDOC 72006.  I decided to do the plane number 69-7582 from the 52nd TFW based at Spangdahlem AB Germany.  It was the boss bird (the personal mount of the wing commander), I wanted to build this jet during a Desert Storm 1991 mission.  This specific jet was based at Incirlik Turkey during the war versus Iraq.  This plane finished the war with 42 mission marks, I show it with 30 mission marks (30 little phantoms on right side!!!).

  The 2 colors USAF upper/lower camouflage is standard at this time for F-4G (lizzare scheme from the Viet Nam era had disappeared for the majority of planes) I followed AIRDOC documentation: FS26270 Gunze acrylic Grey H306, FS26118 Gunze acrylic Grey H305. AIRDOC decals are very accurate but the boss jet on the sheet was described during 1988 and it had small differences on the camouflage scheme regarding 1991 period pictures found on the web. (3 Stars instead of mission marks, grey shark tooth instead of a colorised one, two tones squadron badge instead of one color). I decided to be accurate as best as I could so I painted carefully the shark tooth jaw and eyes.

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    I added armament to enhanced my model.  It carries two AGM-88 HARM anti radar missiles from my spare parts box, 3 tanks and an electronic countermeasure/jammer pod ALQ-131 from a F-16 kit.  A perfect Wild Weasel mission load, in fact in reality 2 air to air missiles AIM-7 Sparrow were also carried on the two empty back locations.  I opened the two canopies to show the cockpit interior from the kit without additional aftermarket parts.  I also weathered the camouflage to show the panel lines.

    It was a pity to see that this plane was shot down as a QF-4 drone on March 10th, 2006. Now F-4 are very rare in flight in USA (Heritage show), some foreign countries continue to use the Phantom (Germany, South Korea, Japan, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Egypt). 

Phantom for ever (see the little cartoon)!!!!

Jean-Charles Goddet

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Photos and text © by Jean-Charles Goddet