Hasegawa 1/72 Italian F-104...J???

[Giorgio N]

Time to start a thread for my build: the old but still good 1/72 Hasegawa F-104J in Italian Air Force markings.

No need to talk much about the kit, it's been around for a long time in the same box:

 

Inside there are quite a lot of parts in the light grey hard plastic typical of Hasegawa. 

 

The kit is well known and is still good 30 years after its introduction. At the same time it features some small inaccuracies and can benefit from some work to improve certain details.

This kit was part of a family of F-104 variants, this issue includes parts and decals for the Japanese F-104J or the Canadian CF-104. I'm pretty sure however that there have been issues with the same cover with the Japanese option only.

My box includes decals for both... and these will be useful in my build 

 

Note that the quality of these pictures is not great.. I'm using my mobile phone and some of the colour settings are a bit weird.. have to find how to sort them

[Giorgio N]

Let's see some references now...

How many books does a Starfighter enthusiast need? The right answer would be one more than those he already owns but an acceptable answer would be one with a general history, one showing all the details and one dealing with the specific user to show markings etc.

 

As a general history book there are several options. For many the first call for a US aircraft is often a Squadron Signal In Action volume, and this was maybe my first book on the type. Mine is the second edition.

 

Another book I like a lot is this, that includes many lesser known pictures together with a good history. 

 

Moving to the details, here are everybody's past and present favourites:

 

Books with detail pictures for modellers appeared sometime in the '80s and the Verlinden Lock On series were amongst the first. Their volume on the F-104 was the first of the series and appeared in 1983, when the Starfighter was still in service in large numbers. This book already featured all colour pictures, something quite unusual for the time. It may be old but it's still a valid resource...

That however is today blown away by the Daco book! This is an incredible volume, with 160 pages covering every smallest detail, including the armament. 

 

There are of course books that have a bit of everything and one such option is the Japanese FAOTW series, here shown with another book from the same Country:

 

The FAOTW books include many colour pictures and drawings showing the markings, a good history and other information in Japanese language and a selection of details, also pretty good. If I could read Japanese I'd probably buy them all! 

The Koku-Fan volume inly includes pictures, it's the kind of book where to find inspiration for the next model.

Unfortunately absent from my collection is the Model Art Profile volume on the F-104J. These are great books but today they are almost impossible to find for prices that wouldn't require a mortgage..

 

Moving to the books covering a specific country, for Italian Starfighters the best around is this:

 

A fantastic book, with a good history of the F-104 use in Italy and a stunning selection of pictures covering all eras. This book is currently available and it's worth every cent of its price.

 

Of course there are other books around, some very valid. These are the ones I own today (ok, actually not all, I have a few more) and the ones that will help me through the build

 

 

[reini]

Welcome to the GB 👍

 

Good choice of kit and nice reference material. 

[Marklo]

Welcome Georgia.

 

That’s some serious research.

[Giorgio N]

I had originally planned to start working on this model over the weekend, however I had the chance of spending this in a lovely mountain town... and yes, I love my hobby but models can wait when you have the chance of a day like this,,

 

 

Fortunately I managed to get something done between yesterday and today so it's time to start posting pictures.

First of all... I am a bit surprised that nobody commented on the title of this thread: I was expecting to be told "Hey Giorgio, you should know that Italy never used the F-104J, this was a Japanese specific variant so why are you building a J?"

And yes, Italy never used the J, they used the G and the S (and of course the TF-104G). So what am I really building ?

Well, in modelling terms the main difference between the J and the G is in the adoption on the latter of wider main wheels, that resulted in builged wheel well doors. The Hasegawa G/S issue correctly adds these (and other parts specific to the S), the J lacks these and only supplies the narrow wheels and non-bulged doors. These were used not only on the J but also on the CF-104 and.... on the early Gs !

Yes, the early F-104Gs originally had narrow wheels and non-bulged wheel well doors and this is exactly what I will build: an early G in service with the 4° Stormo before the wider wheels and relative doors were retrofitted on all aircraft.

All early Gs also used the C2 seat, that is the only one included in the J box. The G/S box adds the Martin Baker seat that was retrofitted later by some users (Italy included).

This is why I'm using the J kit, it includes almost everything I need. I also have in my stash more Js than Gs while I have in my to-do list more Gs, so using a J to build a G works well.

 

So let's start by preparing the parts and this means removing a number of antennas and lights from the fuselage and tailplanes:

 

 

I've highlighted in red the bits to be removed based on pictures of my chosen subject and other aircraft in the same timeframe. All parts can be simply cut with a modelling knife. Removing them leaves a very smooth fuselage without any external antenna..

 

One more thing to add is the gun panel. Now here's where I hit the first problem: did my aircraft have a gun or not? The picture I have is of the starboard side, so the gun panel is not visible. However all pictures of earlier and slightly later aircraft from the same unit showed that no gun was carried so I decided to go with no gun. 

Unfortunately the J box does not include the part for the covered gun muzzle, that was installed every time the gun was not mounted. This is present in the G/S box and fortunately I had this among my spare parts since I had previously built a Mafineflieger F-104G with the gun.

This panel is invariably a bad fit in the Hasegawa kit and this time was no exception. Having built a few Hasegawa 104s before I prevented the problem by adding a slice of plasticard on the lower contact surface. After a bit of sanding the area looks much better

 

 

[Hook]

1 hour ago, Giorgio N said:

an early G in service with the 4° Stormo

Excellent choice. Will she be in the natural metal with the white / ADC Gray wings and black codes scheme?, always wanted to do one of those.

 

Cheers,

 

Andre

[Giorgio N]

4 hours ago, Hook said:

Excellent choice. Will she be in the natural metal with the white / ADC Gray wings and black codes scheme?, always wanted to do one of those.

 

Cheers,

 

Andre

 

The NM/white/grey scheme is something I've planned for a while, however this will be camouflaged.. but with a twist: I'll build the model as one of the first camouflaged aircraft. These already had the standard camo however they retained the large black codes of the NM scheme. These were used for a very short time and were soon replaced by the better known white codes. For this reason this combination is quite rare and together with the narrow wheels makes for an unusual Starfighter. 

A couple of aircraft in this scheme cam be seen in this page:

https://www.aviation-report.com/arrivo-in-italia-del-primo-lockheed-f-104-starfighter/

 

[Andrew]

8 hours ago, Giorgio N said:

...I am a bit surprised that nobody commented on the title of this thread...

 

I wanted to, but was worried that you had addressed your rationale in the opening post and I'd just failed to read it thoroughly! Anyway, good explanation and I understand perfectly now. Great start and I'm looking forward to your build.

[helios16v]

On 3/4/2025 at 7:21 AM, Giorgio N said:

First of all... I am a bit surprised that nobody commented on the title of this thread: I was expecting to be told "Hey Giorgio, you should know that Italy never used the F-104J, this was a Japanese specific variant so why are you building a J?"

And yes, Italy never used the J, they used the G and the S (and of course the TF-104G). So what am I really building ?

Well, in modelling terms the main difference between the J and the G is in the adoption on the latter of wider main wheels, that resulted in builged wheel well doors. The Hasegawa G/S issue correctly adds these (and other parts specific to the S), the J lacks these and only supplies the narrow wheels and non-bulged doors. These were used not only on the J but also on the CF-104 and.... on the early Gs !

Yes, the early F-104Gs originally had narrow wheels and non-bulged wheel well doors and this is exactly what I will build: an early G in service with the 4° Stormo before the wider wheels and relative doors were retrofitted on all aircraft.

All early Gs also used the C2 seat, that is the only one included in the J box. The G/S box adds the Martin Baker seat that was retrofitted later by some users (Italy included).

This is why I'm using the J kit, it includes almost everything I need. I also have in my stash more Js than Gs while I have in my to-do list more Gs, so using a J to build a G works well.

 

 

I knew you were way to knowledgeable on this airframe to make a slipup like that.  Just biding my time for the rationale to come forward.  I figured there was a logical reason for your selection...or that you had the required G/S conversion bits in your spares.   

[Retired Bob]

On 04/03/2025 at 15:21, Giorgio N said:

Yes, the early F-104Gs originally had narrow wheels and non-bulged wheel well doors and this is exactly what I will build: an early G in service with the 4° Stormo before the wider wheels and relative doors were retrofitted on all aircraft.

That is something I didn't know, I thought that all the F-104G airframes were 'beefed up' and had the wider tyres and bulged doors.

I read that Lockheed wanted to call this version the "Super Starfighter" because of the improved capability that this variant had.

It will be good to watch your progress with the Hasegawa Starfighter, I have quite a few in the stash to build. 

[Giorgio N]

3 hours ago, Retired Bob said:

That is something I didn't know, I thought that all the F-104G airframes were 'beefed up' and had the wider tyres and bulged doors.

I read that Lockheed wanted to call this version the "Super Starfighter" because of the improved capability that this variant had.

It will be good to watch your progress with the Hasegawa Starfighter, I have quite a few in the stash to build. 

 

Yes, the G was a more robust structurally revised aircraft compared to the previous variants. The wider wheels however were introduced during production. Not that many left the factory without them... IIRC of the Italian F-104Gs only the first dozen were delivered with the narrow wheel and all were retrofitted with the wider ones pretty soon.

Interestingly, in the official parts catalogue for the F-104S, the narrow wheels are still included as an allowed option. Not that I've seen any F-104S with the narrow wheels, but they were in the logistics system.

 

[Giorgio N]

On 3/7/2025 at 8:56 PM, helios16v said:

 

I knew you were way to knowledgeable on this airframe to make a slipup like that.  Just biding my time for the rationale to come forward.  I figured there was a logical reason for your selection...or that you had the required G/S conversion bits in your spares.   

 

I know, I've been a bit cheeky with the title of my post... that I should now modify really.

In my case the only part I'd need from the G/S box is the faired gun option, that's because these 4th Stormo aircraft had interception as their only duty. It would be possible to build other early Gs from the J box without any other part. Recently the G/S box seems to have become easily available again and just bought one from a Czech shop... I've got a few in the stash but I also have many other Starfighters planned in the future...

[Retired Bob]

5 minutes ago, Giorgio N said:

Interestingly, in the official parts catalogue for the F-104S, the narrow wheels are still included as an allowed option. Not that I've seen any F-104S with the narrow wheels, but they were in the logistics system.

That's suppliers for you, "That's how it was delivered, so you can have the replace parts"  I wonder if they do actually have some narrow wheels in a storeroom logistics hub somewhere? 

[Giorgio N]

I've done some work over the last few days and the model is now slowly taking shape.. the rear fuselage halves are now glued together and I've started preparing the parts for the intakes. Pictures of these will follow, for the moment I want to show some work in the cockpit.

 

I will be building this model mostly OOB so I will use the kit parts for the cockpit. I actually have a few aftermarket options, for example these sets from CMK:

 

The box on the right only includes the cockpit parts but the one on the left is for the very big detail set that CMK did for the Hasegawa Starfighter kit. This includes a lot of parts, not only the cockpit but also a number of electronic equipment bays, the wheel wells and relative doors, flaps and slats, the radar and a section of the engine. A nice bonus is a vacformed canopy, that I may use to improve the Esci kit.

To use all these parts the modeller should represent an aircraft during maintenance but the electronic equipment boxes and the rear engine panel could be seen open very often on the flight line so they will be very useful, CMK unfortunately did not include one detail that was also often seen in the open position: the parabrake housing. One day I will build a Starfighter kit with all these areas open and visible!

I should maybe add that over time I managed to lay my hands on 3 of these full sets, all either second hand or at heavily discounted prices... plenty of resin for all my future F-104 builds!

 

For now however let's focus on the kit parts, on which I first spraied a coat of Vallejo FS 36251. The actual colour should be FS 36231 but I find this too dark in a 1/72 model, the Vallejo pain I use looks better. Later I started adding the black details to the instrument panel, consolles and control stick.

 

 

On this kit Hasegawa deviated from their standard treatment of the kits in this price range: here we have raised details on both instrument panel and consolles. This is also very accurate! Mind, a number of the individual panels in the consolles could be seen in different places on different aircraft so there may be slight differences here (particularly on the right consolle). The panel also includes the section that controls the nuclear weapons and this was not present on all aircraft (sure not on the F-104J). In any case it's nice to see that even the individual buttons are where the pictures of real cockpits show them to be.

Unfortunately the cockpit as is sits too low in the fuselage! To raise it I glued sections of plastic square rod under the consolles, bringing the whole higher up. This means having to sand the bottom of the seat, that would otherwise be too high and would not allow the canopy to close. 

 

An interesting feature of the Hasegawa kit is that the instrument panel is moulded in clear plastic. I often wondered why, Hasegawa offers the option of painting everything or using the decal they supply. What's the point of having a clear plastic part ? Well, whatever their reason I have used this in the past to make something a bit different.... Paint everything except the instrument panel faces and then apply the decal on the rear of the panel ! That's why you can see white areas under the instrument faces in the picture, I've not painted these but only the instruments frames. To do this it's important to have a good quality small brush (mine is the smallest in the Tamiya line) and a lot of patience.... My first attempt a couple years ago was ok, we'll see if this time it will be better.

 

P.S: of course the decal on the rear will have to be glued in place with something, I can't attach it as a decal because it's on the wrong side of the part... I will use some of my last bottle of Johnson Klear... don't know what I'll do when I'll have used it all

Edited March 13 by Giorgio N

[Giorgio N]

So let's see what the cockpit parts look like after a bit of painting and the decals..

 

Not bad! The decals applied to the rear of the panel are not very visible in the picture but I swear that they are visible under the clear plastic. The effect is nice, however I wonder if it's worth the effort... on the next OOB Hasegawa Starfighter I'll try a different approach and see if it looks better. I guess that a Quinta Studio set would have resulted in a more impressive cockpit and this is what many will probably prefer. At least this technique is free, although a bit time-consuming.

The cockpit still lack the throttle that is not moulded in the plastic part but is quite visible so it's a worthy addition. I generally only add this after the cockpit is glued inside the fuselage to avoid snapping the part during assembly.

The seat is also missing. I tend to add the seats in place as one of the last things. This is even more important here as having raised the cockpit position I want to be sure that the seat fits well and the best way to check this is after having glued the rear clear panel in place

 

[helios16v]

On 3/13/2025 at 10:56 AM, Giorgio N said:

 

I know, I've been a bit cheeky with the title of my post... that I should now modify really.

In my case the only part I'd need from the G/S box is the faired gun option, that's because these 4th Stormo aircraft had interception as their only duty. It would be possible to build other early Gs from the J box without any other part. Recently the G/S box seems to have become easily available again and just bought one from a Czech shop... I've got a few in the stash but I also have many other Starfighters planned in the future...

 

Honestly, I'd leave it.  The title definitely had me clicking the thread in curiosity.  I actually didn't know that the early Gs were narrow wheels like the CF & J.

[reini]

@Giorgio N Good start! 👍 Early Italian G is definitely on my Starfighter build list.

 

I did not know that there were no-gun variants of the G too, I thought that the Italian no-gun variants were S / S-ASA CI interceptors with the Aspide electornics. Was the space used for extra fuel on the G or what was the rationale to lose the gun? Just to save weight?

 

But in any case, good to know - have to be more cautious when checking up on my F-104 reference material in the future

 

[Hook]

2 hours ago, reini said:

Was the space used for extra fuel on the G

Yes. On the RF-104G as well.

 

Cheers,

 

Andre

[Giorgio N]

On 3/15/2025 at 10:24 AM, reini said:

@Giorgio N Good start! 👍 Early Italian G is definitely on my Starfighter build list.

 

I did not know that there were no-gun variants of the G too, I thought that the Italian no-gun variants were S / S-ASA CI interceptors with the Aspide electornics. Was the space used for extra fuel on the G or what was the rationale to lose the gun? Just to save weight?

 

But in any case, good to know - have to be more cautious when checking up on my F-104 reference material in the future

 

 

Every F-104G could have a fuel tank in place of the gun. This was however not too common.. with some exceptions.

Italian F-104Gs in air defence units really had the Sidewinder as their main armament, the gun was not seen as particularly useful. The preferred armament configuration was the one that I will reproduce here: missiles on the wingtips and nothing else. Not having fuel tanks under the wings meant that having some fuel in place of the gun was not a bad thing.

Other F-104G that did not carry a gun were often those tasked with nuclear striker. Here the idea was to try and squeeze as much fuel as possible to reach targest farther away. These aircraft would have had no use for a gun anyway.

And of course, as Andre mentioned, the RF-104Gs carried no gun

[Giorgio N]

Some progress: with the cockpit completed to a level deemed sufficiently good for a closed canopy build, it was time to trap all parts between the front fuselage halves. Fit was decent, although the lower surfaces required some work. This kit has been in practically constant production since 1989, so no surprise that the moulds have suffered a bit. Nothing major though and the lower surfaces will have to be modified anyway so losing some panel lines was part of the game from the beginning.

Here are the front and lower fuselage sections ready to be mated together:

 

While waiting for the glue to set on the front fuselage section, I started working on the wings. These require two things:
- plugging the holes for the pylons. The kit has 2 sets as the same part is also used for the S variant that featured two pylons under each wing. Since I'll building an aircraft without any pylons I closed them all using my preferred solution: gluing rod sections of an adequate diameter into the holes. These will then be cut flush with the wing surface and the whole sanded.

 

 

- Rescribing the wings... the Hasegawa kit for some reason features a very simplified representation of the panels on the wings. To correct this, I drew a template of the panels in the correct shape on my PC and then cut them from vinyl using my Silhoutte cutter. Here below are the top surfaces, with the wing on the left showing the original panel lines and the one on the right with my rescribed panels. I ran some black ink into the panel lines to make them visible, this smudged a bit but it will be all cleaned before priming.

 

Something similar will be done for the lower surfaces. Here the Hasegawa kit also lacks a number of small access panels, these will also be rescribed 

[RidgeRunner]

On 3/4/2025 at 10:04 PM, Giorgio N said:

 

The NM/white/grey scheme is something I've planned for a while, however this will be camouflaged.. but with a twist: I'll build the model as one of the first camouflaged aircraft. These already had the standard camo however they retained the large black codes of the NM scheme. These were used for a very short time and were soon replaced by the better known white codes. For this reason this combination is quite rare and together with the narrow wheels makes for an unusual Starfighter. 

A couple of aircraft in this scheme cam be seen in this page:

https://www.aviation-report.com/arrivo-in-italia-del-primo-lockheed-f-104-starfighter/

 

An excellent choice, Giorgio. This one should look great!

[Giorgio N]

Small update, not directly related to the model but a consequence of building it: this is a kit that I know very well, I'm now building my 5th (3 completed and one that ended badly during the build). It's overall a pretty simple kit and can be built quickly if no improvement is added. The problem with liking a kit so much is that any time I'm building one I think of the next one to build and I end up buying another one. And here's what was in a box I received yesterday...

 

Must say that the box was really a bit too large for 3 kits and it was mostly filled with paper... at least it will be useful to store stuff inside.

The G/S issue seems to be available again from several shops in Europe. I paid around €13 for this, a bargain considering what other kits cost at the moment. It came with an Eduard Bf.109G-2 and an Airfix Swift and will now join the Hasegawa F-104 strategic reserve waiting to be built as a standard G with wide wheels and associated  bulged doors. Markings to be decided but it's not like I lack F-104 decal options...

[Giorgio N]

And now finally my subject:

 

 

This is MM6512 coded as 4-12. Picture taken from the Italian Starfighters book shown above (hope it's fine to post the picture, if not let me know and I'll take it down).

Noticeable are of course the rarely seen black unit codes. Less easy to see here but visible in other pictures are the stencils of the original type. These were the standard US stencils and were later replaced with the ones in dual Italian/English language. I will take these from the CF.104 decal sheet that is included in the kit.

 

The aircraft is shown loaded with two live AIM-9Bs and this is how I will build her. The picture also shows flaps and slats lowered, I'm now thinking if it would be worth doing this on my model. I was planning a mostly OOB build but I'm tempted by this small modification

 

[Retired Bob]

If you need any German 1/72nd Starfighter markings, you cannot go wrong with the Daco decal set.  Just sayin. 

 

 

[Giorgio N]

4 hours ago, Retired Bob said:

If you need any German 1/72nd Starfighter markings, you cannot go wrong with the Daco decal set.  Just sayin. 

 

 

 

 

Yes, they are a great set of decals ! I have part of the set for the German aircraft and the one for the Belgian aircraft from DACO. A Belgian aircraft in natural metal is one of my future plans