I’m thinking about using the napalm tanks from a H’gawa weapons kit on my A-4E. These tanks have fins, Is that accurate for Vietnam era? Also, I’ve seen air force tanks in natural finish, do naval birds use the same or are they painted black?
Ray
Some Viet Nam era tanks had fins and some did not. The ones without fins tumbled a lot more and were difficult to deliver accurately, especially for close air support missions. The ones with fins were more prevalent and both kinds were usually natural metal finish, at least for the Air Force. I don’t know much about the USN weaponry.
Darwin, O.F. [alien]
I think Navy ones where finished in white or Olive Drab
You can find the correct Vietnam era napalm tanks in the 1/48 Revellogram A-37B kit.
At least these are the most common ones that I have seen on the aircraft of the time. The ones in the Hasegawa set are of a more modern design.
As for the fins? They were removed for the simple reason that Yardbird78 stated. They tumbled and spread the effect of the napalm to better effect.
Most all of the tanks that I’ve seen were unpainted. The one exception that I know of was used by A-26Ks out of Thailand. The bottoms of these tanks were painted black, the same as the bottoms of the planes.
All the photos of USN/USMC aircraft from Vietnam had natural metal finish on their napalm canisters (though it wouldn’t surprise me if their were some with experimental paint jobs).
Thanks guys!
I’ve just started on that A-37 kit, Chopperfan. I was a teamchief of a weapons loading team on the original A-37A’s of the 604th SOS at Bien Hoa AB, RVN in !968 and 1969. We couldn’t use the fin assemblies on the napes because they’d bounce on the ground when our planes taxied. You and Yardbird are correct about the canisters tumble giving a better distribution of napalm on the target. All of the napes I ever saw and/or worked with were used in natural aluminum with no paint what so ever—not even any stenciling. At one time, we got a bad batch of containers that had broken electrical cables and had to resort to some interesting field modifications. The broken cable meant there was no electrical continuaty between the initiator well and the fuze pigtail… So we cut a hole in the front endcap so the initiator would fit there; dented the area around the hole with a hammer; then glued the iniator into the hole with RTV. We cut-off the fuze pigtail; crimpped a clip on the cut end for attaching it to the initiator contact to act as a " jumper " cable directly to the fuze. Then, we’'d attach the arming wire to the pull-ring of the initiator just like we normally did to nose fuzes of GP bombs. The last step was to use some good old 100mph tape to hold the arming wire against the body of the nape to keep the slipstream from catching it and causing the bomb to arm on the A/C. That’s how I intend to model the napes for my A-37. There are a few things I need to do first to " accuratize " the plane. Then, scratch-build a GAU-2 minigun package for the nose gunbay. and correct the instrument panel, etc. When flying the modified napes, each A/C would also be hung with CBU-19’s that contained white phosphous bomblets to make sure the napalm worked right. [:)]
One last thing. We never flew the smaller 250lb napes. Our squadron and the 3 F-100 squadrons always used the 750lb " big-uns ".
Only Air Force and Marine aircraft carried Napalm tanks. The Navy did not use them because there was no place to store the napalm jelly on board the carrier. Also in case of a fire on board the carrier, they didn’t want the jelly burning out of control. If a Navy aircraft did carry napalm, they would fly from the carrier, to a Marine or AF land base to get loaded with Napalm.
High speed aircraft, such as the F-4 carried the finned tanks. The reason, it prevented vibration in flight. When we flew with the un finned type, the tanks would start vibrating due to air loads under the wing, hitting the tanks. Normal loadout of BLU-27 tanks on the F-4 was two on each inboard pylon. Only the shoulders were loaded. For Centerline MER’s the load put was 4, again with only the shoulders loaded.
thanks again for the info. This is a Marine Skyhawk BTW.
Ray