Furball Aero-Design 48-031: 12th TFW Phantoms

Here is another superb sheet of Vietnam War F-4s from Furball Aero-Design. This sheet concentrates on the F-4Cs of the 12th TFW that was based at Cam Ranh Bay in 1968. All of the aircraft are in the standard SEA camouflage scheme. By this time, the tail code situation had been stabilized by each squadron carrying the same tail code within the wing. In this case the wing code was X with 557th having a C and red trim, the 558th having a T and yellow trim, the 559th having an N and blue trim. When the 391st took the place of the 558th, they adopted the yellow trim and the XT tail code.

The sheet includes two wing commander's planes, each with multi-color bands on the fin tip and through the wing badge on the intake. Though each of these two planes were maintained by different squadrons, they both had the XN tail code of the 559th. The second wing CO option has these bands on the wing fuel tanks. The two planes were named 'Shehasta' and 'Sugar Foot III'.

In fact, all of the aircraft on this sheet were named. I should mention that the trim on these planes was located on the tips of the inner pylons, stabilizers and fin as well as on the lower canopy. This seems to be pretty much the standard placement for USAF Phantoms during the war. Since these planes looked so similar, I'll just run down the list of plane names.

There was Mystic Shaker which is currently on display at Selfridge Military Air Museum, Hell's Angel which is at the Minnesota Military Museum, Satan's Chariot, Bunkie Battler which is on display at the Mojave Airport, The Snake, Tricky Vics, Sandy Bay-Bee, Half Fast, Joltin' Josie III, Jeannie which is on display at Seymour-Johnson AFB, and Goat Roper.

The sheet is superbly done by Catrograf and comes with not only a large painting and stencil guide, but also a load out diagram. These decals are sized for the Academy kit, but will probably fit others though no guarantee. There are enough common markings for two planes, though you could easily snag what you need from the donor kit if you wanted to do more.

For those interested, the 557th, 558th and 559th are now all Flight Training Squadrons with the 12th Flight Training Wing while the 391st flies F-15Es out of Mountain Home AFB.

December 2014

Review sheet courtesy of http://furballaero-design.com. You can get yours now at this link.

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