German Phantoms Part 1: The Steely Shadow

[Anatol Pigwa]

Time to show my hand. In my defence I was not sure what my had would be until today.

 

I'm joining with a napalm lugging Phantom. Now these two things are commonly associated with the Vietnam War, and you might be forgiven if you expect a F-4E in SEA Camo.

However today I learned, with the help of some great people on BM, that the German Bundesluftwaffe also at some point equipped their Phantoms with napalm, and there is even an official documentary to prove it!

The movie shows the training excersize "Stählerner Schatten" from 1975 which translates literally to steely shadow, hence the title of my build.

 

Since I intended to model a German F-4F for this GB anyhow; my topic will be now a machine from JaBoG 35 or 36 (haven't decided which one yet)  in Norm 72 camo and a loadout  as depicted in the movie mentioned above.paints 

 

The build will be, as always , in 1/72 and the base will be the venerable Revell kit (pictures to follow).

 

Aftermarket:

- Eduard masks

- HaHen decals

- Model Master tubes

 

- AK paints (first time use)

 

You may have noticed that this is titled part one. This is because I intend to model (atG least) all the major color schemes the German Phantoms had over the years. This will certainly not happen all during this Phantom GB though.

 

[Anatol Pigwa]

Time to show some work:

 

I tried to follow Fernando Rollantellis excellent build from hyperscale.com (http://www.hyperscale.com/2015/features/f4fphantomii72fr_1.htm)

 

 

 

I believe I might have ben a little too eager cutting the flaps of the F-4F. I remember that there have been diffrences between the different versions of the Phantom as wheter the outer, or the inner flapps dropped more (or at all) . Can someone please give me some pointers here?

 

Another issue is the outer wing. apparently the one I used is ia left-over from the RF-4 kit. But my reference material shows this to be the correct wing for the early german F-4Fs, so I am cionfused.

 

The Royal Jet tank if pilöfered from a Hasegawa F-4G kit, while the TERs on the pylons and the napalm tanks come from the Hasegawa weapons kit.