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In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the eight-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech--and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there was a camp of natives--he called them enemies!--hidden out of sight somewhere. -- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness COLONEL SAMUEL TRAUTMAN (Richard Crenna): You expect sympathy? You started this damn war! Now you'll have to deal with it! COLONEL ZAYSEN (Marc de Jonge): And we will. It is just a matter of time before we achieve a complete victory. -- Rambo III, Dir. Peter McDonald, 1988 FYODOR SUKHOV (Anatoliy Kuznetsov): Восток — дело тонкое. [The Orient — a delicate matter.] -- Белое солнце пустыни, Dir. Vladimir Motyl, 1970 The Su-24 Fencer is sort of the Soviet Union's version of the Panavia Tornado, if the Tornado was the size of the F-111. (The Su-24 has a smaller payload than a Tornado, despite being twenty feet longer. Soviet aircraft tended to carry less than their Western equivalents, however, and as the Su-24M was intended to deliver a single nuclear bomb as one of its primary roles, it probably didn't overly fuss Sukhoi much.) It's a big beast and comes from the era before relaxed stability, when swing-wings were the thing to have. And have them the Soviets did. The Su-24, Su-17, Tu-22M3, MiG-23/27, and Tu-160 all had them, more swing-wing production types than everyone had combined. If war had come, Su-24s would have launched deep-penetration interdiction raids behind NATO lines or delivered nuclear weapons. But war never came, or at least not the war they were made for. I'm building the Trumpeter 1/72 FENCER-D, pretty much the only accurate Fencer on the market -- my preference would be the earlier FENCER-C, but life is hard. I cleaned my desk up from the Yak. 2016-10-29_10-44-19 by Clean-ish, on Flickr I have a teeny little bit of aftermarket -- I'm not a big aftermarket guy. Just an Eduard mask, Begemot decals and stencils, and a Master Models pitot tube. 20161030_002841 by The Fencer on the desk, on Flickr I plan on using Akan's paints for this. 20161030_005059 by Akan paints, on Flickr I'll be building "20 White" of the 143rd BAP (Bombardirovchnyy Aviatsionnyy Polk -- Bomber Aviation Regiment), which by bizarre coincidence, operated the Yak-28 BREWER bomber until it switched to Su-24s in 1978. 143rd BAP operated Su-24Ms over Afghanistan, including the plane I'm building. The Begemot sheet doesn't have the markings for it, but it has markings for "02 White" with the same (slightly unusual) bort number font. I should be able to cobble together everything I need from it. 20161030_002800 by Edward IX, on Flickr I like the look of the KAB-500 smart bombs, but the kit only comes with two -- I welcome suggestions for an appropriate Su-24M loadout over Afghanistan.