F-84F Thunderstreak ATO bottle rack

[Rob de Bie]

Monogram provides a set of four bottles in its 1/48 kit, but forgot the rack that these bottles mount to. With a lot of photo manipulation I created the following rough sketch of the rack. But there's too much guessing involved to start scratch-building it. Where oh where can I find real dimensional data of this rack?? Any help is welcome.     

 

 

Rob

[Des]

I have a couple of books on the F-84 and have had a look through them but the few images of the F-84F with the bottles fitted are not clear enough to show any detail of the jettisonable rack to which they are fitted.

 

However in F-84/RF-84F Thunderstreak - Thunderflash by Robert 'Robbie' Robinson and published by Merlin Massara Publishing in 2015 there are two of the author's own drawings.

 

One of these looking from the forward face of the bottles aft shows a square looking frame to which the bottles are fitted with a separate section attached to the forward end which seems to be as long as the square area but curving in and up to a point at its foremost edge.   

 

The other drawing looking from the jet nozzles on the bottles forward shows a three-part generally square looking frame consisting of a rectangular centre section with a curved arm either side to which the four bottles are attached but stops short of showing anything forward of that. 

 

Taken together they essentially show what you have drawn above but with the rear section being more square/rectangular in shape and the forward section being of roughly the same length and tapering forwards from full width to a point.

Edited July 14, 2019 by Des
added a 'a'

[Rob de Bie]

3 hours ago, Des said:

I have a couple of books on the F-84 and have had a look through them but the few images of the F-84F with the bottles fitted are not clear enough to show any detail of the jettisonable rack to which they are fitted.

 

However in F-84/RF-84F Thunderstreak - Thunderflash by Robert 'Robbie' Robinson and published by Merlin Massara Publishing in 2015 there are two of the author's own drawings.

 

One of these looking from the forward face of the bottles aft shows a square looking frame to which the bottles are fitted with a separate section attached to the forward end which seems to be as long as the square area but curving in and up to a point at its foremost edge.   

 

The other drawing looking from the jet nozzles on the bottles forward shows a three-part generally square looking frame consisting of a rectangular centre section with a curved arm either side to which the four bottles are attached but stops short of showing anything forward of that. 

 

Taken together they essentially show what you have drawn above but with the rear section being more square/rectangular in shape and the forward section being of roughly the same length and tapering forwards from full width to a point.

Des, thanks for your response! I didn't know about the book by Robert 'Robbie' Robinson, I'll look for it.  Is he the British U-2 pilot? Thanks for the description of what you see in the drawings. Are these drawings three-quarter views? I don't know a better description unfortunately. Many 'In Action' booklets have similar drawings to point out details of the aircraft. 

Rob

[Des]

1 hour ago, Rob de Bie said:

Des, thanks for your response! I didn't know about the book by Robert 'Robbie' Robinson, I'll look for it.  Is he the British U-2 pilot? Thanks for the description of what you see in the drawings. Are these drawings three-quarter views? I don't know a better description unfortunately. Many 'In Action' booklets have similar drawings to point out details of the aircraft. 

Rob

The blurb on the back says that he was an RAF serviceman originally from Cornwall to which he had returned at the time the book was written but other than mentioning that he was stationed in East Anglia in 1959 gives no further information on his service.

 

The drawings are slightly off sideview , not quite so angled as the three-quarter views in Squadron Signal publications.

 

Quick search came up with this PDF sample of the book which unfortunately does not include the page in question  -  https://www.gmpub.co.uk/sites/default/files/samples/Thunderstreak-sample-pages.pdf?width=90%&height=90%&iframe=true

[Rob de Bie]

On 7/14/2019 at 11:41 PM, Des said:

The blurb on the back says that he was an RAF serviceman originally from Cornwall to which he had returned at the time the book was written but other than mentioning that he was stationed in East Anglia in 1959 gives no further information on his service.

 

The drawings are slightly off sideview , not quite so angled as the three-quarter views in Squadron Signal publications.

 

Quick search came up with this PDF sample of the book which unfortunately does not include the page in question  -  https://www.gmpub.co.uk/sites/default/files/samples/Thunderstreak-sample-pages.pdf?width=90%&height=90%&iframe=true

Thanks, now I've got a good idea of the type of drawings! I'm afraid they will not tell me the dimensions of the rack. I'm afraid there are not many left. The Brussels museum one has one, but arranging access might be problematic.

 

Rob