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The F-5E was developed from the F-5A by Northrop and was
intended for export as a cheap and capable fighter aircraft.
In the end, over 25 nations ended up flying versions of the
F-5. The United States Air Force, United States Navy and the
US Marines all ended up flying the F-5E, mainly as an
aggressor aircraft to mimic Soviet Block MiG’s. In April
1962 the US Secretary of Defence approved the selection of
the F-5 for the Military Assistance Programme (MAP) and this
lead to the F-5A and F-5B models. Northrop then developed
the F-5E in-house and proposed it to the Defence Department
and the USAF. In November 1970 the F-5E was chosen and in
December 1970 a contract was issued for 325 aircraft,
officially designated the F-5E.
The F-5E first flew in August 1972 and deliveries to the
425th TFTS at Williams AFB commenced in April 1973 (this
unit was responsible for training foreign pilots, whose
countries had, or would later purchase the F-5E. The F-5F
followed into service soon afterwards.
My build was the first batch of around 30 aircraft which
I want to model, covering all variants of the F-5 in USAF
service as well as the F-20 Tigershark. Whilst there are a
few kits of the F-5E available in 1/72nd scale, probably the
best is the Italeri release which has now been around since
the 1980’s and the five models I built all came from this
manufacturer (note that the Hobby Boss release appears to be
a copy of the Italeri kit, although the fin does not fit
well and I believe there are also issues with the canopy).
The Italeri kit is quite simple and goes together
reasonably well, although it does show it’s age in that the
panel lines are raised rather than being engraved. The
cockpit is quite good and there is good detail in the
undercarriage bays. To increase the level of detail, I made
a few changes. The cockpit was replaced with a resin one
from IPMS Austria, and I used True Details resin seats. I
modified the intakes to represent ones with blanking plates
fitted and cast resin replacements. I drilled out the gun
barrels and replaced them with Minimecca steel tubing. The
navigation lights were drilled out, silver was added with a
marker pen and Tamiya clear (red and green) was added. I
cast copies of the navigation lights on the intakes in clear
resin, masked the fronts off and attached them – removing
the mask later left the front of the lights clear.
The only real fit problems I had were with the fuselage.
This comes in two halves (upper and lower) and all five of
mine cracked after the halves had been joined. Whether this
was because the cockpits splayed the fuselage halves or
because the plastic was waxy and didn’t join well I don’t
know – but friends who have also built this kit have had the
same problem! I also noticed that the 5 I built all came
from different production batches as the plastic varied from
a brittle medium grey to a very waxy light grey!
For my first batch of F-5E’s, I chose a wide selection of
airframes to depict. Two are aggressor aircraft, one in a
modified Sand scheme, and the other in the VNAF Scheme
(actually SEA!). This latter scheme is quite interesting –
at the end of the Vietnam War, the USAF had a batch of
F-5E’s which were to be delivered to the VNAF. When the US
pulled out, the aircraft were redirected to Nellis AFB where
they became Aggressors.
I have, for many years, wanted to model the F-5E’s which
were used to trial the Ferris camouflage schemes and two of
my models depicted the different schemes. After painting the
two, I realised that the paint scheme information I had was
incorrect as the shades of grey recommended were far too
light (and one even missed the lower colour entirely!) – I
decided to accept this as the alternative would be a
complete repaint!
The final aircraft was used for development work by the
USAF. I chose to depict it as used during trials of the
GPU-5/A gun pod (the pod is not shown in the photographs as
I had not painted it at that point!)
Paints used were mainly Xtracolor, although the Sand
aircraft was painted using a custom mix of Humbrol paint. I
made a colossal error in using Humbrol Glosscote prior to
decaling and completely ignored advice to the contrary
(mainly because it was the only gloss varnish I had in
stock!) It never dried properly (even thinned 50/50 with
thinner) and picked up dust and fingerprints afterwards.
Unfortunately, even a coat of Pollyscale Matt varnish did
not hide all of the damage and the end finish is nowhere as
good as it could have been – you live and learn I guess...
However, I did try out a few new techniques, and this was
the first use of my new Iwata Hi-Line HP-CH which I highly
recommend! |
