When the F-16 beat out the F-17 in the USAF’s lightweight fighter competition, the Navy was instructed to look at a Navalized F-16 to supplement the expensive F-14 Tomcat. GD teamed up with Vought because of the latter’s carrier aircraft experience. Three-four separate designs were considered. The main landing gear was beefed up, A-7 landing gear was used for the front gear, a fuselage plug was put in, the wing chord was increased, and a new radar was to be installed so that the AIM-7 Sparrow could be used. A heftier tailhook was put in place and the anhedral on the horizontal stabs was taken out. One last change was a forward-hinged canopy, ala the F-35. While the design never went anywhere (Northrop teamed with McDD to create the F-18), there were still design schematics and some artists’ interpretations of what it would have looked like. One day I’ll do a “serious” model with all the changes, but just for fun, I had the old Monogram F-16 and Revell/A-7 that had been parted out, so I thought it would be fun to do a “test” build and see how it would look. I had 1/72 decals for VF-21, so I went with those. Here’s the result.
