Is this some ancient Lindberg kit? Saw this in the Historic Aviation catalog...Curious plane that would be a good addition to the Blue Angels kits I try to find...
Did they use a different color blue back then? this looks a lot more toy like than today's darker blue.
thx - Craig
Monogram used to make a BA F-11F kit, but that ain't it. Yeah, it don't look right as far as "Blue Angel Blue" goes.
FWIW - an old F-4 dude at the plant in STL once told me that the first BA F-4s were just painted with blue Rustoleum from the local hardware store when they were first converted.
Yes, that is indeed a ancient 1/48th scale Lindberg kit that I must have at least four times as a kid. The only difference between that and their stock F-11 Tiger was this one has something that looks like a probe and drogue refueling probe on the nose rather than the pitot tube and lacks the underwing rockets, it was also molded in blue rather that the stock Tiger's white.
Pat
That thing ( toy ? ) is so ' odd ' looking. Wrong shapes and sizes for an F-11 Tiger. Landing gear is way out of scale. Wrong shape of the vertical tail. Take a look for yourself at some Blue Angel Tiger photo's. Keep in mind this is the ' long nose ' Tiger varient. Come to think of it the F-11 has always been ' odd ' looking to me. Look at the way the wing tips fold down.
Looks like they clipped the sides of the elevator on the way up to the flight deck. ;-) Here's a classic old Monogram kit:
I will never understand why the Blues didn't adopt the F-8 Crusader for their mount. I think it would have been an awesome show bird. It would have looked cool in Blue Angel livery too. These are some reasons that I have come up with :
- The Blues were loyal to Grumman
- They had a bad experience with Vought and the Cutlass
- The Crusader may not have handled as well as the Tiger at low altitude.
- Crusaders were needed in the fleet and not available
- F-8 might have been more of a maintenance headache
However :
- The F-11 had a short service life in the fleet ( the Crusader was better )
- The F-8 went on to become the " Mig Master " in Vietnam ( Last of the Gunfighters )
- The Thunderbirds were using the latest and greatest at the time ( F-100 )
- The Thunderbirds even gave the F-105 a try for a bit.
Hmmm.
Chris
Possibly it represents one of the early prototypes that started as F9Fs. Eventually the changes made to the airframe made a designation change necessary, one of the few times something like that happened. ;)
Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.
kit:
...all you ever have to do is talk to anyone that ever actually flew F-8s, and you'd understand. I ran into a former F-8 jock when I was at NAS Kingville, and he described "surviving F-8s" vice "flying" them. He also had time in F-4s an F-14s.
That's putting it mildly - they hated that plane, like the rest of the Navy pilots did also. It didn't even make this desk model set:
I think the small size of the Tiger also argued in its favor, as small aircraft tend to be more maneuverable and look like they are going faster at air shows. I saw the Budweiser BD-5J flying at a air show, and although it was only doing around 250 MPH, you were expecting a sonic boom when it went by due to its diminutive size...you were also expecting it to be wearing a two-tone green splinter scheme and swastikas, because it sure looked like something the Luftwaffe would have deployed in 1946, possibly the "Kleinevolksjager". The Tiger was sort of the last of the breed of fairly straight-forward postwar jets before all the complex avionics started to hit, with the Crusader and Demon being the transition to the new generation. (Speaking of the Demon, this is one odd way to fold a aircraft's wings:
Well, it would have been loud, that's for sure. I suspect they like their F/A-18s a lot better than their old F-4s. The Skyhawk probably worked quite well for them; again, a small maneuverable aircraft with fairly low maintenance needs. Although people love building models of it, a Blue Angels F-14 would have been a disaster area from the maintenance point of view. From the above website: "...apparently the Skyhawk was not the first choice or even the second choice of the Blue Angels team, however in 1974 they had first requested for F-14 and A-7 but both requests were denied. The F/A-18A Hornet is the present fleet in the Blue Angels team; the Hornet first flew in
1978. The Hornet F/A-18 was perfect for demonstration team work and allowed the Angels to include new maneuvers in their routine. The F/A-18 Hornet has the longest service record with the Blue Angels team and one of the best safety records." The A-7 would have probably done quite well also. I suspect they will be flying some variant of the F/A-18 for many years to come. Now the Thunderbirds in F-117s...the Air Force could say they'd already flown the air show, and the crowd just hadn't seen them. ;-)Pat
Lindberg tended to bring out model jets as soon as they could after they were revealed, so a lot of their models were of the prototypes of the plane. Their F-104 for instance lacked the ventral fin, and the Skyray, Crusader, Cutlass and Skyhawk all sported nose pitot tubes in their original issue and other features only found on the prototypes and very early versions of the aircraft
Pat
And here's why:
Pat
p://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:F3H_F11F_CVA-19_1960.jpg=A0sort of a
The Tiger was too underpowered. Even Blue Angel pilots admit that the F11 excelled in the dive. They had to climb back up to altitude after maneuvers to get up enough speed to do the next one. That J-65 in afterburner only put out about the same amount of thrust as an F-8's J-57 dry thrust.
That's where the F-8 in my opinion would have excelled. If the Blue's had adopted the early models ( F-8 A,B,C or D ) before the design gained too much weight ( F-8E ) a stripped down F-8 with fuel burned down ... and in afterburner would have had close to a one-to-one thrust weight ratio.
Yeah I bet the Blues would have loved to get their hands on the ' Super-Tigers ' but the Tiger design was a loser.
Interesting that Vought had the upper hand in beating out Grumman with a better aircraft. It was due to the J-57. Vought was a close partner with United who built the J-57.
I can't believe the Blue's actually considered using the A-7 Corsair. Boy talk about underpowered. Yeah ... sure ... would have been neat ... but what a pig.
Chris
Ahh ... the Blue's Navy jet jocks were cream of the crop. Highly skilled high time aviators. But yeah you are right, the F-8 was a handfull. Skip Umstead who became a team leader in the F-4 in the early 70's had a couple of combat tours in Vietnam in the F-8. Later he was killed in an accident with the Blue's in an F-4. Go figure.
From what Tomcat drives have told me the F-14 would make a terrible choice for a BA show jet because it's tricky to hold station in formation because of the swing wing just for admin type flying - you end up using the stab for your sight picture. Big, heavy, expensive, a maintenance nightmare on top of that, yeah.
Personally, I haven't really been impressed by the BA or T-Birds shows since the F-4 days. Glad I got the chances to see both of those shows.
kit:
The BA F-4s were my all-time fav show jets. Nothing I've seen since them comes close.
They actually considered moving to T-45s for a bit while I was working Fleet intro on that platform. Obviously didn't happen, though.
Let's face it, the Canadair Tutor isn't exactly a rocketship, but the Snowbirds do some very nice flying in them, although I imagine they could have gone with F-101s if they had wanted to. Now the Blue Angels in Vigilantes... ;-)
Pat
The BA scored a one-up on the T-Birds here in Jamestown on two successive year's airshows. The first year, the BA brought their F-4s in and gave a great show. The next year, the T-Birds showed up, but had to fly their F-4s in from Fargo, 100 miles away, because Jamestown's runways were "too short" for F-4s to operate from. Score one for the Navy. It really was something to see those F-4s roaring all over the place. ;-)
Pat
how long have they used F-18's ? What bird will replace the Hornet?
Craig
I believe the first season for the Blues using the F-18 was around
1986. Currently it's a record for both the Thunderbirds and the Blue Angels for length of use with current aircraft. I think the T-birds switched to the F-16 in 1983. Previously I think the record with the Blue's was the F-11. ( 1957 - 1969 ). For the Thunderbirds it was the F-100. ( 1956 - 1969 with a brief period of using the F-105 before switching back to the F-100 )So now it's around 24 years for the T-birds ( F-16 ) and 21 years for the Blues ( F-18 ). Definitely some of the best years of demonstration teams for both services IMHO.
What's next and when will they switch ? Good question.
F-35 ?
Chris
Yup. Big, fast, loud, and ugly...and low. Magnificent!
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