ITALERI 1:72 F-84F THUNDERSTREAK

 

Reviewer: Mark B (SMAKR Webmaster)  (smakr@bigpond.com)
Kit Built + Review Submitted:  30 January 2003

Kit Details:

Italeri Spa No.107 - 1:72 F84 F Thunderstreak

Aircraft History:

It is often said that the Republic F-84 family of fighters spanning Thunderjet, Thunderstreak, Thunderceptor and Thunderflash best represents the transition of the piston age to the defining jet age, when the Century Series of fighters were produced and not forgetting the P-47 Thunderbolt as the start of such a venture.  For in this time, when the type first entered service as the straight wing Thunderjet in 1946, the many advancements in jet technology and aerodynamic features during the time had all been incorporated into the swept wing, closed nose version of the RF-84F Thunderflash when that type finally retired in 1982.  The F-84 history can be traced back to 1944 when Republic entered the frenetic race to develop and produce America's first jet fighter.  Early attempts were to put a jet engine into the P-47 Thunderbolt but this did not work, and eventually Republic went back to the drawing board to produce a proper fighter having regard to the Germans having produced jet fighters at the end of WW2 and the Russians also commencing their own jet age program.

Republic persevered and the F-84 was the result, and was the first post-war American jet fighter in production, in 1946.  In spite of being a solid and reliable performer there were a number of deficiencies around its performance and some of these centred around its thrust and aerodynamics.  The green light was therefore given to design a swept wing version.  The swept wing design development was hampered by a number of delays and the fact that its performance was not much better, and in some areas such as ceiling, worse, than the straight wing version.  The swept wing version was only some 70 miles per hour faster than the straight wing F-84.  While development was continuing on the swept wing design, the definitive straight wing F-84G was produced.  Thus, the endless delays, problems and then budget decisions effectively secured the swept wing F-84 version to the scrap heap.  But that all changed in 1950 when a series of events on the Korean peninsula suddenly opened up the flood gates on defence spending and the swept wing version was again in development.

First given the designation of F-96 the swept wing Thunderjet eventually became the F-84F Thunderstreak and was one of only two US swept-wing fighters to derive directly from straight wing aircraft (the other being Grumman F9F Cougars) .  As with the straight wing Thunderjet's the F-84F's performance as a fighter was disappointing so it was relegated to ground attack sorties where all F-84 types excelled.  The F-84F flew many missions in the Korean conflict and claimed several MiG kills in spite of inferior performance, although some missions it had to be escorted by F-86 Sabres to stave off the MiGs!

By the end of (and as a result of) the Korean War a number of political changes had occurred in Western Europe, and in Paris in October 1954 NATO decided that occupation of West Germany would end, and the French, English and American soldiers who remained there would do so as allies rather than occupying forces.  Two years later the Luftwaffe received its first combat aircraft since WW2 and these were F-84F Thunderstreaks.  The Luftwaffe was the largest user of F-84F's outside the US.  The F-84 family of aircraft were the frontline defence of NATO during the late 1950's and the Thuderstreak served with many of those nations including USA, France, W.Germany, Netherlands, Greece, Turkey, Italy and Belgium. 

The F-84 Thunderjet was also the first aircraft ever to be used by the American flight demonstration team, the Thunderbirds which commenced in 1953, and from 1955-1956 F-84F Thunderstreaks flew 91 shows before being replaced by F-100 Super Sabres.  The theory was that they could go supersonic for the first time with the F-100's but the fact remained the speeds used during shows were about the same as they were with the F-84F's.

The F-84 family of aircraft will be remembered as taking part in more development, experimentations and jet-age programs than any other post war jet fighter.  Some of these include the FiCon (Fighter Conveyer) program where B-36 were mother ships to F-84 fighters and reconnaissance aircraft; JATO being jet assisted take off for shortened runways; carriage of nuclear weapons; XF-91 Thunderceptor program which was the first USAF combat jet aircraft to break the sound barrier in level flight; installation of a new engine to become XF-84J which was the only F-84 aircraft to attain a speed above Mach 1; test bed for the Republic Mach 3 XF-103 aircraft which had the pilot encased in the fuselage and thus could only fly by instrumentation; Rocket launched VTOL test bed (Luftwaffe tests only used F-84F's); and the XF-84H which was essentially a swept wing F-84 jet with propellers on the nose - still considered to be the noisiest aircraft ever built.  There were some other programs as well, almost all of which incorporated F-84F's.

The Kit:

The two light grey plastic and one clear sprues are loose in the box with the instructions and decal sheet between them.  The panel lines are a bit thick and are raised and I feel the surface detail has an overdone look to it.  The sprues do not contain part numbers, so these need to be cross referenced on the instruction sheet.  The bottom of the box includes the two versions you can reproduce from the kit with colour chips accompanied generic names only provided.

Instructions:

This comes in the form of an 8 page fold-out sheet, each page being roughly around A5 in size. The first couple of pages are devoted to providing history and model information in several languages plus sprue diagram.  Since the sprues do not contain the part numbers, you need the sprue diagram for location of the parts.  An alphabetic labelled list of colours is then provided keyed from the ModelMaster range with FS numbers provided provided where possible.  The five-stage construction phase then follows, which is easy to follow, and small inset diagrams help with smaller sub assemblies for areas like the cockpit, canopy, undercarriage, nose section etc.  The final two pages provide four-view colour scheme markings for the two versions provided for by the kit but annoyingly no direction on the placement of decals!  You will have to scrutinise these diagrams and that on the bottom of the box, and work out where to place the decals yourself!

Construction:

Since this kit has been around for quite some time, the cockpit is typically 70's sparse although I believe there is an Airwaves set you can use to spruce it up.  There is no instrument panel as such or any sidewall detail.  The pilot's seat is attached to a rear deck and a pilot figure is supplied to let his legs hang loose in the cockpit.  A dashboard with a small bump, I assume perhaps a HUD, is affixed at the front of the cockpit underneath the windscreen area.  Clear parts are supplied for the rear windows and these are designed to be installed before the fuselage halves are joined, and I suggest before you put in the cockpit as well.  You can see right through the two rear windows, which means the main fuel tanks (I assume this is the fairing) right behind the pilots seat are not depicted. I painted the cockpit a mixture of interior green and medium grey, with black decking, medium grey seat and a pinch of aluminium here and there to give it some interest. You may want to do some research on the interior, as some sources suggest Interior Green (as do Italeri's instructions) whereas I believe it was a medium grey colour. While the cockpit unit fits very well, take care to test fit first and ensure that the cockpit is straight and level so it will mate correctly with the other fuselage half.

The tail fin is molded integrally with the port fuselage half so other than the nose, the halves are pretty complete.  But before mating the fuselage halves together you will need to cram in a fair bit of noseweight, as this bird is a tail sitter.  Also, when the halves are joined, there is no rear jet pipe to install, meaning you can see right through the aircraft, plus there are a couple of ugly ejector pin stubs to remove just near the rear opening.  I installed a shallow jet pipe I had which just fitted nicely, from the spares box.  In the next step is the separate nose section and I just smeared some putty at the back of this to block out the interior.  Using plasticard or raiding the spares box, one could possibly also insert a jet pipe.  Once you take care of this the fuselage halves go together very nicely.  The join lines need a little run over with the blade to remove, plus there is a gap underneath the tailfin on the starboard side which needs a dab of filler.

Splitter plates are installed in the nose section for the intake, where 10g weight is recommended (good luck fitting it between the intake splitter as the instructions suggest!) and then the nose can be installed onto the front of the aircraft and again fits quite well, although some will want to sand away the panel lines and blend the nose section in better.  The fuselage airbrakes are separate and can be displayed in the open or closed position with some small amount of detailing inside the airbrake housing, but no detail on the inside of the door or hydraulic jack supplied (I'm not fully sure if they were on this aircraft?).  In the closed position it fits okay but is by no means perfect and the small gaps would require filling.  A clear part just forward of the tail fin can be painted in clear red as the navigation light - although it is technically quite overscale.  The main wings are broken into upper and lower halves, the wheel wells contain very little detail and are not really boxed in.  Two sets of gear doors are provided, broken down parts for wheels-down modellers and a one-piece gear door section for wheels-up although the latter is marked not for use on the instructions.  The one-piece gear doors are just a slight smaller than the opening in the lower wings but hobby glue run along the gap from the inside of the wing, is enough to be a filler.  This can be said also for the gap resulting from the main wing sub assembly, since the upper halve overlaps with the trailing edge flaps.

A test run of the main wing assemblies against the fuselage revealed gaps at the root.  I noticed a seam line along the wing root so I used the file to remove these and found the join much better against the fuselage with only hobby glue needed as filler.  

From here all that was left to do was add the canopy, undercarriage and underwing stores.  The canopy is provided in two parts with operating jacks which allow it to be hinged upward and an open cockpit displayed, which I think is an excellent option provided for by the kit.  My main canopy was very scratched and needed a good polish to get it looking nice, although it still looked scratched on my finished project.  The canopy parts do fit very well, but don't snip off the pointy bits on the windscreen (which I initially thought was flash) as it is part of the windscreen part and is supposed to fit under the main canopy.  For underwing stores the kit only supplies a pair of large and medium drop tanks.

All in all a pretty simple construction project, and aside from using filler to blank off the interior for the rear jet pipe and the back of the front nose section, the tube of filler remained unopened for the actual model project.  

Colour Schemes:

The kit caters for two colour options to reproduce out of the box - a boring natural metal F-84F-35-RE USAF, National Guard, 1953 and a Luftwaffe F-84F, Jabo 32, 1962 in upper European Green and Dark Gull Grey camouflage over Light Ghost Grey undersides.  Throughout the project I was intending to reproduce the USAF version, as I have a tendency to finish projects in the air force livery that either produced the type, or you could say you most often associate the aircraft type with.  However, another natural metal 50's USAF jet to the cabinet without any real colour wasn't appealing so I went with the Luftwaffe version.

Of course there are a number of aftermarket decal sheets for this particular aircraft, I know of a few different sheets from Superscale, that cover from Royal Netherlands Air Force to colourful natural metal USAF examples, including the Thunderbirds USA aerobatic display team.  So you can choose one of the other aftermarket options available instead of staying with what the kit offers.

Painting:

I was a bit suspect about the colours quoted by Italeri to finish the Luftwaffe version in being Dark Green (FS 34092); Dark Gull Grey (FS 36231) and undersides Ghost Grey (FS 36375).  To me these colours were too clean, contrasting against each other and just not dark enough when I compared them to photos and artist impressions.  I did some digging around and found some information suggesting F-84F's were finished in the respective colours of RAL 6014 Olive Drab (FS 34087); RAL 7012 Basalt Grey (FS 26152) over the RAL 7001 Ghost Grey quoted.  I chose to use Humbrol 155, 27 and 127 respectively and this appeared closer to the reference images I had than that light stuff quoted by Italeri.  It may pay to dig up your own references and see what you can find out as I think Italeri have got the painting information wrong, their colours may be more appropriate for one of the French examples?

Decals:

Printed by Zanchetti, the small decal sheet is split into two halves, essentially one for USAF and the other for Luftwaffe.  Colour register is sharp and the decals appear thin with a semi gloss finish.  A couple of minor scratches were found on my USAF insignia, not sure if this is a result of the printing or transportation of the kit.  Needless to say they went on without any problems, and the carrier film disappeared under the satin finish.  However, the instructions provide no information on decal placement so it is up to you to work it out from the profile sketches on the sheet and bottom of the box, although a big blow up poster from Airplane (or whatever the weekly magazine is) helped.  I also matched up the decals with the small outlines on the model itself which no doubt assist with precise positioning.

Accuracy:

Apart from the mentioned absence of the (fuel tank?) fairing in the rear cockpit area between the two rear windows and the painting information, the kit stands up quite well to scrutiny, particularly for a 70's vintage.  The measurements are very good with Length being spot on and Wingspan at worst 1 mm underscale and these were taken from a variety of sources which agreed with each other, although the Italeri instructions conflict.  None of the large artists impressions (sideview profiles etc) I had a look at included the little clear red anti-collision light just in front of the tail fin, however, this is seen on photos and in the "cutaway" drawings on aircraft, but the kit's version is quite overscale, so need to reduce this by painting over the ends a little bit.  Tail navigation lights, bulkheads at the front of the aircraft and the jet pipe are also absent from the kit.  Furthermore, a small pitot tube should protrude from the intake but this can easily be added with stretched sprue.  The gun troughs are inaccurate, but this to me is more about molding limitations than anything else.  On a similar note so are the intake suction relief doors that are easily seen on the forward fuselage section as these could be opened up.  Overall the profile of the aircraft is pretty good and I am satisfied with the look of the Thunderstreak that Italeri have produced.

Overall Recommendation:

This would be one of those kits that I would be saying is "Vintage Italeri" from the 70's that you often saw at competitions and model expos, as the modelling choice over other brands, including Hasegawa and Airfix.  For an aged kit this one is a winner in just about every sense - it is easy to build, the fit is generally very good to excellent, the detail is apparent and you get an accurate looking F-84F model at the end of it.  Highly recommended to all modelling skills.

 

Related Reviews:-   

Related INBOX Reviews:-  

SMAKR Home  |  What's New  |  Submissions  | Information Requests |  News  |  Links  |  Reference Corner  |  Site Info 
1/72 Reviews  |  1/48 Reviews  |  INBOX Reviews