Northrop SM-62 Snark Missile

[astrodoc]

Hi everyone,

Here is my humble attempt at Revell's Northrop Snark cruise missile, manufactured at the weird scale of 1/81 in order to fit in their standard box at the time. Box design was Revell's History Makers series (early 1980's), although the tooling dates back to the late 50's!  I had anticipated an horrendous built with warped fuselage halves, flash everywhere and lots of filling and sanding, but I was very pleasantly surprised. The main fuselage went together quite well and although some filling was required it was no more than you get with far more recent kits. And the launch frame and other components were relatively flash-free. I did miss a couple of ejector pins holes on the yellow launching frame (see photo) but what the heck:  after multiple coats of yellow paint on the original bright "Post Office Red" plastic, I wasn't going to go back to them.

 

I was a bit concerned that all the decal's white stripes and lines would not come out well on top of the bright red colour of this missile, but things did not turn out too badly.  The decals, though, were old and showing their age (1982) starting to yellow slightly and were very fragile. Needles to say, copious quantities of setting solution were employed to get the decals to lay well over all the embossed rivets and other detail that aircraft/missile kits of this age exhibited. This was reasonable successful but less so in some instances. I'll leave it to you to judge.  

 

The decal and paint scheme was for the prototype version of this early cruise missile. Production units were painted USAF SAC grey. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments, both negative and positive, welcome!

 

Cheers

Steve

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Very good looking Snark 👍

[Thud4444]

I haven't seen one of these in years. Great build.  It looks like it was fun.

 

[astrodoc]

Thanks guys.  I'm now on the lookout for the Snark's brother, the Chance Vought Regulus II, which was the US Navy's version of basically the same type of cruise missile, although the Regulus was launched from specially outfitted submarines. It's another kit in Revell's History Makers series, but prices are still too steep for me on the auction sites. Will have to be patient.

S

[Pete in Lincs]

That looks very nice indeed.

Big wasn't it?

[astrodoc]

The kit is 26 cm tail to tip. 28.5 cm if you include the pitot tube.  The real thing was 20.5 metres according to wikipedia.

 

Lindberg made pretty much the same kit in 1/48, making it over 44 cm long. Apparently it came with the mobile launch platform on wheels, plus a towing tractor, hydraulic steps and a launch crew of 9 in addition to the missile. Would love to get my hands one but most sellers are in the USA and postage to Europe is more than the proce of the kit!

S