Thursday, April 22, 2010

Famous Fighters to Color, Cut Out & Fly


Commander David McCampbell led a flight of six U.S. Hellcats against a Japanese force of twenty bombers and forty fighters. It was October 24, 1944, just tour days after the American invasion of the Philippines, and McCampbell knew that the Japanese planes must not reach the American fleet supporting the invasion. Sending four of his Hellcats after the bombers, he and his wingman. Roy Rushing. took on the forty Zeros. When the combat was done, McCampbell had downed nine Zeros. Rushing scored six. and the enemy force was dispersed, lacking fuel for further battle. By the war's end McCampbell had 34 kills to his credit as the top U.S. Navy Ace. Robert S. Johnson of the 8th Air Force was thought to have been the first American to top Eddie Rick en backer's World War I score of 26 victories. It turned out that Richard Bong had accomplished the feat a few months earlier in the Pacific. By war's end Johnson shared top ace honors for the European conflict with Colonel Francis S. Gahreski, each with 28.

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Model Aircraft Monthly 2002-04


The June 1986 issue of Scale Models carried a useful article on converting KP's MiG-19 kit into its radical Chinese development, the Nanchang A-5 Fantan-A attack aircraft. Progressive upgrading has brought the Fantan up to A-5C standard, an example of which was displayed at the Paris Air Show by the China National Aero-Technology Import and Export Corporation (CATIC). I therefore seized on this opportunity to provide a detailed reference of this improved jet, parts of which (undercarriage, etc) are still applicable to the MiG-19 from which it originated. Much confusion has reigned over the designation of this ingenious extrapolation ever since the West caught sight of it in the late seventies; development must have been decidedly low-key as the initial flight took place as long ago as June 1965! Originally, and erroneously, described as the F-9 by Western sources, the designation was changed to F-6bis when its relationship to the Shenyang F-6 (MiG-19 copy) was established, until the true title of Q-5 was revealed to a group of industrialists visiting China's Nanchang factory, where production was under way. Q stands for Qiang which translates at Attack, hence the export label of A-5.

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