Republic F-84F Thunderstreak

[kerick]

Wow! A couple of those guys look like they are in their whitey tighties!! No women working on aircraft back in those days!

Those gun ports on the F-84 wing roots could easily be mistaken for air intakes of some sort. Plenty of those scattered around the rest of the fuselage. Identical ports on each side pretty much confirm it's the gun ports as shown in the drawing. I never knew about those either.

[Pellson]

Having had another go on the web, it seems to me (but I might be way off) that these leading edge slats were omitted sometime during the production run. As shown above, some of the possibly earlier USAF a/c definitely had them, but as far as I can see, the later NATO a/c didn't, as exemplified here on a Belgian machine, US serial 52-7129 and hence a F-84F-51-RE, i.e relatively late.
Sorry for huge pic, but I'm justifying with the need to show rivet detail



The pic is from a walkaround of said machine at the Belgian army museum, and can be looked at >HERE<

Given all above, I think some minor adjustments to the backstory of my modernised Thunderstreak is called for. I'll develop that further in the blog thread.

Thanks all for support with this. Much appreciated

[Old Wombat]

Hang on! That can't be right!?

There are only 1763 rivets in that image! There should be 1764!