If you are as screamingly bored with the political process right now as I am, and even more bored with this Swift Boat vs. ANG Service catfight, I have found a way to use it to a modeler’s advantage. Now, there are plenty of detail photos of Kerry on his Swift boat, and I’ll leave that to them what builds such things. But the media keep using the same stock shot of a squatting Lt. Bush in front of a plane. Now, I have my treasured copy of the 1973 50th anniversary book put out by the 111th FIS, TANG. It has a host of photos going, as the title says, all the way “From Jennies to Jets.” Many with Lt. Bush in them. (Members of the unit who were his age tell me he really wasn’t around too much. But, hey, in court that would be hearsay evidence.) The anniversary book stops just as the unit is transitioning to the F-101, and Lt. Bush is ending his ANG tour. (Most Air Guard units have books like this. Check with your local squadron and see if you can at least borrow one. They have a treasure trove of detail photos never published anywhere else.)
Anyhow, if you take that photo of Bush and blow it up on your screen, what you will get is a detail shot of the inside of the missile bay doors on the F-102 behind Bush, and in the foreground is fin detail on an AIM-4C Falcon missile. Looks like they dragged out a live round for photo day. Sort of like we all had to get a haircut and wear a geeky bowtie on photo day in grade school. You can clearly see the seemless little fairings over the actuators that moved the ailerons (I guess that’s what they’re called on missiles; on the AIM-9 Sidewinder, they are called “rollerons,” because they roll rather than flex to maneuver the missile in flight). AIM-4’s, I’ve always found, are a pain to paint, because most versions were painted white from the fins forward, and red from the from the front of the fins back, and they are tricky to mask perfectly. On the Deuce, the interior of the weapons bay and the gear wells are a quite dark variation of regular old MM Interior Green (forgot the FS no.), almost a bronze green, but not as blue. I’ve stuck my head up in two of them, and they had not been repainted since delivery.
Though about an even thousand F-102s were built, including the two-seaters, they were a disappointment in just about every category. Technology had not quite caught up with the concept yet, but it did, on the F-102B, later renumbered the F-106 and one of my favorite all-time planes. But to another Fun Fact: The doors to the 102’s missile bays had tubes built into them, and they held 2.5-inch folding-fin unguided rockets. Another Fun Fact: The AIM-4 (also, GAR-2) was orginally designated F-98, because fighter designations were, for a short time, given to the new air-to-air guided missiles. The big early cruise missiles, like the Snark and Mace, originally were given B for Bomber designations, which is why you will find Fighter and Bomber numbers with no airplanes to go with them.
The ProModeler or Monogram 102 is a joy to build, although many of them, like my first one, hot off the presses, had a terribly warped fuselage.The 106 kit, now 21 years old, is still a nice kit in every way but the raised panel lines, and I wish there was AM stuff for both these kits. If someone would finally give us a decent F-100, those of us dying to do so could have an entire Century Series collection. I’d like a shot at using Koster’s conversion kit to make the Monogram F-101B into a single seat recce or bomber escort version.
Tom
Now that was some really cool info, especially the stuff about the missile tubes in the doors. I have always wondered why there were missing aircraft from the F and B designations. I thought they were failed prototypes. I lived on a Snark base form 1959-1961 and never knew the numerical designation. Do you know what it was?
ps Thanks for keeping the politics out of this section. It can cause a real ruckus.
Tom,
I have the complete Monogram Century Series that I bought years ago. I am awaiting inspiration (and detail sets) to start them. I agree with you about the F-106 - I still think it’s a beautiful airplane. The century series were the hot planes during my youth and I retain a fond affection for them - and for the Monogram series. The Monogram Century Series kits were ones that brought me back into modeling as an adult. They suffer by comparison now, but in the '80’s they were serious attempts to represent the real thing.
For some reason I have seven Monogram F-100s (got them for almost nothing). Didn’t I hear a rumor that someone (AM or Trumpeter???) was going to release a new 1/48 F-100D? It’s still on my agenda to build the series, but I’ll probably substitute the Hasegawa F-104 instead of the Monogram.
Trumpeter has plans to release a F-100D but I believe its going to be 1/32
That AM F-100 rumor refuses to die, and the company will no longer even respond to questions about it. I guess if they were going into the jet market, that would be a sure-fire best-seller, given the demand for the type and their track record for great kits. Let me see if I can’t find you a designation for the Snark, Sub.
Tom
The Snark got the designation B-62 when the USAF started giving aircraft designations to its missiles in 1951. The practice didn’t last long. The Designation-Systems site is one every modeler should bookmark. But here’s the specific page for the Snark. Enjoy.
Tom
Thanks SharkSkin…for the info & your eloquence
one of my favourite Jet modeling periods is focused on the Century Series…
wishes i could show off the 1/144 collection…
Regards…
great info there sharskin! thanks for sharing
Priceless info in that diatribe - thanks, Tom.
Always loved the f-100 series (0,1,2,4,6 - even the rapier was cool)
The older I get, the more I realize that the airplanes we love tend to be like the music and movies we love – it’s connected to what you grew up with, at least in my case. And when I was eight years old, I didn’t know or care that the F-104 could not win a turning engagement with a flying manhole cover, or that it only had a range of about 20 miles in afterburner. To me, it was the coolest thing on two wings and remains so to this day. But then, I love that big, brutish Thud, the elegant Hun, the Six Pack, which to this day is almost the apex of delta wing technology. And even the Deuce. Without the 102, we would not have had the area rule, and a lot of fast airplanes would have never flown. And I never stop going on about my first memory, age two, being a B-47 taking off trailing six big ropes of black smoke. And then in the third grade seeing a B-58 go over our town at what, to me, was tree top level. I fell in love with it, and still am.
I don’t want to go into cheap poetics here, but it just goes to show that we who love flying machines romanticize them as we do women: we fall for the most beautiful, the most expensive and the most impractical ones. But it’s the plainer, down to earth ones that make sure we get home when we have lost our way.
Tom, that last post puts me in the mind of a certain Doctor of Journalism of whom I’m a big fan. Excellent.
sharkskin
You’re probably right. Growing up in the 50s and early 60s I probably had the best of both worlds.There were still a lot of big iron radials being operated by the military and airlines and even a few operated by civilians. B-36s, F4Us, F(P)-51s, C-46s, C-47s, C-54s, PB4Y-1s and 2s, B29s, B50s, C-97s, C-124s, DC-3s, 4s, 6s, and 7s, Connies (I rode the last scheduled piston powered flight flown by TWA, a Connie out of St. Lous to KC in 1966) to name some. And most of them flew low enough you could really see them. (Except the B-36 - I remember that when one went over at 40,000 ft, the first clue was that the dishes in mom’s china cabinet would begin vibrating - you’d run out side and there, way up hi was a contrail - and that’s all you would see unless you had a set of binoculars - dishes would vibrate for three or four minutes).
And the jets, (although there never seemed to be as many of them as prop driven aircraft) -T-33s, F-84s, F-86s, F9Fs, F7Us, F-89s, F-94s and of course, the B-47. Forbes Field up at Topeka was a SAC B-47 base and my home town was 60 miles directly down the center line of the main runway. From the time that the 47 moved in there (some time in the mid fifties until I went into the Army (1963)) a day didn’t go by that you didn’t see at least two of them departing from 13 or on final to 31. And there were many nights when the wind was out of the south or south east that I was awakened at 1, 2, or 3 oclock in the morning by the sound of jet after jet departing to the southeast, one minute apart just as regular as a clock. Alert time. After all these years, I still watch the skys for signs of aircraft and listen for the sounds of aircraft engines (especially radials - they sound entirely different than any thing out there). But unfortunatly there are’nt near as many of them today as there was back in those days (but there are a heck of a lot more contrails - they ain’t nearly as neat)
What you guys have said rings true with me, too. I was born on a USAF base in what was French Morocco. Sometimes I feel that I’ve lived a somewhat Forrest Gump type of life and was in the right place at the right time by pure dumb luck since the day I was born all the way up to the present. Thanks, Tom, for the info on the Snark. It was another of those little gems that you have provided to us and I for one do appreciate your efforts.
Interesting stuff gents. I grew up in Holland in the 70’s and 80’s. I wasn’t near any airport, but NATO aircraft seemed to use our church tower as a reference point during low-flying exercises. I saw a lot of stuff coming over low in those days. At the time, the Dutch were flying the F-104G, and I still love the things! I never saw much in the way of Century series aircraft, which is a pity because I’m a big fan of the 106 (and the rest too). Guess I was born just a little too late for that. Then again, low and fast F-111’s and F-104’s (in burner at 150 ft sometimes, over our back yard [:P][8D]) are great memories too.
Oh, and thanks for the link Tom: nice!
I grew up around the F102 and F106. The Montana ANG had them. Their F106s were renown as some of the prettiest birds in the Airforce. They would wax the planes to where you could see your reflection and they would polish the stainless steel on the afterburners.
We had a big ceremony when the last of the 106s left. They were still all dolled up in their Sunday best as they left for Arizona to be converted into tagets. The ANG kept one and its parked up at the airport last time I was home. They had one of their 102s put up on a stand in a park in town and as I grew up, was always excited to drive past it.
In Great Falls, we could tell time by the sonic booms.
Scott
Many years ago the congressman from my hometown was the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and at least a couple of times he arranged for a “flight demonstration” over the corn fields just outside of town. These demonstrations didn’t have as many jets as the T-birds, but then again it was the first time most of us had ever seen a jet up close and personal - even for a neck-snapping instant during a high speed pass.
I’ll NEVER forget one warm summer evening when our family drove to the edge of town to see our first supersonic jet. After half an hour someone pointed toward the horizon and a shiny dot quickly transformed into an F-100. Those were the days when nobody fretted about maintaining a safety zone between aircraft and spectators. The pilot made several passes right over our heads at an altitude so low that everyone ducked as the plane screamed over! He was a master at working the crowd - he would make a high speed pass, disappear over the horizon, and return from a completely unexpected direction. I thought I had died and gone to heaven when he broke the sound barrier.
Yeah I like WWII and modern aircraft too, but those old Century planes were aesthetically pleasing, each in a different way. Those were the days before everything converged on a utilitarian optimum…
Filibert’s mention of the NATO F-104G’s recalls a macabre old joke that used to be told in Europe, when the Luftwaffe was transitioning into the F-104G from the much tamer F-86’s and F-84F’s they were used to. The unfortunate West Germans had an absolutely horrible accident record in the notoriously skittish Starfighter, before they finally tamed the beast and became its best pilots (though many Canadians might take exception to that claim). The joke went:
Q: How can you own your own F-104?
A: Buy an acre of land in Germany and wait a few hours.
And these latest posts remind me of two interesting stories involving Century Series jets:
First, Filibert’s recollection of the Dutch Starfighter recalls the time in the 1970s when the South Moluccan terrorists (Who remembers them? Indeed, who in American knows where that is? For the record, the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, are in Indonesia and are former Dutch colonies.) took an entire train and its occupants hostage. After negotiations broke down after a few days, the Dutch officials, fearing the hostages would be killed, decided to storm the train. But just as the train was to be assaulted, they had F-104s dive almost to the tops of the railroad cars, and light their afterburners just as they pulled out. Anyone who has heard a Starfighter go into full burner (or better yet, felt it), knows it sounds like a 500 lb bomb has gone off nearby. This completely disoriented the highjackers, and – correct me on the facts, Filibert , I’m doing this from memory – I think all the hostages were rescued.
The other story involved a Montana Air Guard F-106 and I’m sure Scott’s heard it, so you can correct my rusty memory as well.
Two MANG 106’s were doing ACM (Air Combat Maneuvers) high over Montana when one of them went into a flat spin, from which the pilot couldn’t recover. When he got down to bailout alititude, the pilot calmly pulled the jet back to idle and ejected (OK, he probably wasn’t so calm by then). But the force of the ejection seat rocket apparently stabilized the airplane, which went out of the spin and flew on, with no one aboard. It glided down to a snow-covered field where, with the enormous Delta wing, it came into ground effect and gently landed itself perfectly. Soon, a crowd of civilians arrived. The huge J-75 engine, still in idle, had enough thrust on the slick snow, that whenever the civilians tried to approach the jet, the angry beast would creep forward a few feet on its belly, sending them scurrying away. I don’t know how many times that was repeated before the 106 ran out of fuel, or someone from the unit got there to turn it off. However, all the plane needed was some sheet metal work, and I read that it flew until the 106 was retired in, I believe, 1983 or 84.
As a footnote, I remember attending William Tell '88, the semi-annual USAF air-to-air weapons competition, and saw the 106s there painted up in their da-glo orange as target drones. It almost broke my heart. They only built 300-odd F-106’s, so they won’t be around much as gate guards once they are all shot up, if it hasn’t already happened. Wouldn’t an airworthy F-106 be something to see on the warbird circuit?
Tom
Hey Tom,
I’ve tried to bite my tongue, but I have to comment on your new signature.
My instructor told me these same three maxims too, but he added if you extrapolate the rules to their logical extreme, you can get into trouble too. The extension of the rules suggests that one should fly as high as possible with as much fuel as possible and land as short as possible. My instructor continued that the challenging (and rewarding) thing about flying is that there are no absolute rules, but you have to constantly use your judgment. For instance, altitude above you is useless - unless you continue VFR into IFR by going higher. Fuel at the hangar is useless, but fuel in the tanks that puts you over gross weight is dangerous and should be left at the field. The final one we covered on another thread, but my instructor perceptively said that runway behind you was useless - unless the temptation to preserve runway ahead caused you to land short.
That’s what I loved about flying - it’s one of the few activities that require you to really think things through, as your earlier signature stated so eloquently.
[%-)][%-)][bow][bow] How in the world did you know about that incident? I’m thoroughly impressed. It happened when I was still very young (being a model 70), but I recall watching it on the news. No live coverage in those days: just sitting in front of the tv at 8 o’clock watching a 2-minute long item. Everything you described is correct. After one of the hostages was killed and his body tossed out of the (stationary) train, the authorities gave the go-ahead for the assault. The assault itself was done (as the F-104’s dived on the train) by Royal Dutch Marines. They had established where most of the hijackers were: on the train balconies, and concentrated their machinegun fire there. I don’t recall if there were any other hostages killed, but I believe not. It was a good thing these hijackers hadn’t thought of blowing up the train at the time. Things have changed these days… But hey, this was about the Starfighters and they (and the pilots: not easy diving low in a 104 with that small wing I expect) performed fabulously. Thanks for bringing it up Tom.[^][8D]
As for the MANG Delta Dart story: [(-D][(-D][(-D][(-D] that’s so funny I could wet myself. Do you have a pic of the specific aircraft somewhere, or maybe an illustration of the markings? If Monogram (or Revell) re-release the 106 again I plan on getting a few and this sounds like one plane I will HAVE to build. Besides, ANG Sixes are cool [8D].
You will find that story (though I got it from an ANG safety publication) in back issues of Wings/Airpower, complete with lots of photos of the plane on the ground, with the blackened snow from the exhaust. I would have given half my jet time to have been there for that. Check the Wings/Airpower online index, because I think it’s covered in their F-106 Special Issue, which was about 1988. I remember another F-106 cover from them from about 1984, so check that one too. I don’t have the web address in my links, but i should, so check the masthead of the magazine. I assume we all use it. It’s a modeler’s best friend, next to Future.
Addendum: As for the photos of the plane in Wings/Airpower, I just remembered something else, and rather odd at that. The tail number of the aircraft had been airbrushed out. I suppose only the Lord and some bureaucrat at the Department of Defense knows why. It’s not like the Soviets couldn’t send a spy down to the ANG base and copy all the tail numbers in the squadron whenever they wanted to. I recall one of the articles I read (Wings/Airpower, I think) said something about the plane being transferred to another unit, where it flew on until retirement.