1/72 Hasegawa F/A18B 

Boeing/Mc Donnel Douglas

Topgun BuNo 161714

by Jean-Charles Goddet

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This model is the Hasegawa 1/72 F-18B Hornet built completely from the box (# 00040).  It shows the flagship of Top Gun's school with a double 0 modex in 1995.  It was the first F-18B assigned to Top Gun for adversary training vs F14 units.  This plane is gloss black except the nose cone in flat black.  All markings are white including national insignia and except full colours famous "mig in gun's target" Top Gun badge.  Gloss Black is not common as adversary schemes which are often very colorful.  I used Humbrol Gloss black 21.

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It was very difficult to find pictures of this plane because it had a short career in this scheme.  I found only one picture in a magazine of this Hornet leading 3 adversaries F-18A flying over San Clemente island CA training area, you can see it on one of my pictures.  The other picture is the cover of the box.  I decided to follow this picture, I think taken at a meeting perhaps at Miramar NAS home of the school at this time.  So I added four Mk83 1000lbs exercise bombs, and two AIM9L air-air  IR exercise missiles.  It is very strange to see bombs under a plane of a school dedicated for air-air combat.  My explanation is that picture shows the Hornet in the last months of the school before its closure in 1997.  After that the air-air training continued at Fallon NAS in the NSAWC (Naval Strike And Air Warfare Center) in the company of a growing air to ground training component for all the students.  It was the result of a new doctrine for US NAVY to use more multi-role planes for example the F-14 with air to ground capacity that it didn't have in the start of its career as a pure fighter.

I hope you have appreciated the little part of the story of aviation myth by my model : the Top Gun school. Created to best train Navy and Marine pilots at the end of the Vietnam conflict, this school gave tools to a lot of students to win air-air fights.  Nowdays NSAWC continues the job and the results talk in favour of the teaching, no losses in air-air combats for decades.

Jean-Charles

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Photos and text © by Jean-Charles Goddet