I have some Mk 77 napalm bombs in 1/48 scale. I want to use them on my A-1J Skyraider. Would they be proper for Vietnam? If not which would be and where can I get them?
In a word, no… Mk 77s are what’s currently in use… It’s an “enviro-friendly” (LMAO) flame weapon since it’s kerosene-based and has less benzine than the Mk 47s used in Vietnam… As for finding Mk 47s, I don’t know where to find them, but I’d hazard a guess that the Hasegawa US Weapons set has a few…
I think I only saw Skyraiders in combat once or twice, and the napalm bombs they used seemed like they were smaller (blast wise) that what would have been dropped from an A7 or an F4. Perhaps I am wrong? Also you need take into what time frame you working on. By mid to late 68 napalm wasn’t really used as much as the years before (it still was, but normally was called out prior to the mission). In the late spring of 68 snakeyes became the thing everybody wanted to use
gary
I think the Mk 77 canister will work for Vietnam era aircraft will work. The MK4 type Hans is referring to which is currently in service is the filler used- it is not the same mixture as the Vietnam era, however teh canister looks the same. The M-47 is the WWII style firebomb casing that was used by B-29s over Japan and such.
edit- BLU 27 were the Vietnam era finned napalm cans used.
Nape’s inboard…
What I have is from True Details and I got the from Squadron. They do look very much like a standard iron bomb. I have the Hasegawa weapons sets but dont remember seeing the napalm in them, I will look again. Were naplam canisters ever painted OD green?
One of the Hasegawa sets has two BLU 27 napalm cans. I have them on my Monogram A-1
All pics of napalm cans from during Vietnam I have seen show then as unpainted aluminum. sometimes a red stripe was painted on.
The red striping with black markings is the color-coding for incendiary ammunition, MB… OD background color is used in conjunction with yellow markings to indicate HE.
Thaught these pics of what i have may help with question.
These came as a set from True Details. They are 1/48 scale and are around 1" to 1.5" long and really do look like a standard iron bomb. did we ever use anything this size in Vietnam for napalm?
Understand that Napalm cannisters are just fuel tanks for all practical purposes… They get filled only when they are to be loaded up onto the aircraft…
Here’s yer flame weapons for Vietnam…
The BLU-27 Napalm cannisters in the back, the BLU-36 Incendiaries in the front…
We used the same napalm containers used on an F4 to store water in, and they looked to me like they were bigger and longer than the ones used on a skyraider. The ones on a Phantom were probably around 12" to 14" in diameter and maybe seven or eight feet long if not even longer.
gary
the simplest way to get 'Nam era Nape,it to look for travel pods and fill in the doors
things that work in 1/72 are cutting the fins off the BLU-27’s that come in the Hasegawa Weapons sets,or F-4 Travel Pods from the inner wing pylons in old Hasegawa F-4E moldings,or the “fuel tanks” that Monogram uses on their inner pylons ,they didn’t mold tanks, they somehow molded Nape’s and called them Tanks on the instruction sheets
on Modern Hobbies page, you can see the MXU pods he makes,and since MXU’s at first were old Nape tanks converted,they make pretty convincing Nape after some filling work
oh, and there was a style of Nape tanks that looked just like a Skyraider drop tank, with a fuse hole in the nose instead of a point
I didn’t understand the Mk 77 being the “modern” type at all,Mk 77’s were one of the first of the streamlined types, intro’d in 1951, and seen in all those “oooo, look what the F-4 can carry” photos back in the sixties (the black “bombs” with the white stripes in those publicity photos)
Modelbuilder,for your original question (I got sidetracked by reading the discussion)
those that you have are the same as in at least 4 pics in Warbird Tech’s A-1 book, they have pics of 3 different sizes, with the largest on the innermost pylons, for some reason they are all called BLU-1’s in that book, but, it shows all the different shapes and sizes around when those photos were taken, 1965 to 1968
they each had a different designation, but for modeling, all you probably want to know is “is this the right shape for one of the Nape tanks used back then”,for that,the answer is yes,in Aluminum without a stripe or OD without a stripe, the later BLU’s had the red stripe,you could even file the nose off on your’s and leave off any fuses, making them “tumble and spark” ignited, just like WW2 and Korean era