North American F-107C, Vietnam War

[PR19_Kit]

... Well, actually it's a kit by someone else that Trumpeter seems to have purchased the moulds of, but still

Ooooh, there's a good chance it's accurate then. 

Not that that matters in the slightest here of course........

[Jakko]

Scalemates says it's a rebox of this kit:

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I don't think I've ever seen a kit by this brand, MonoChrome, but according to Scalemates it's Japanese, and their cooperation with Trumpeter seems to be going both ways, as they've released plenty of Trumpeter kits in MonoChrome boxes too. More than the other way around, by the looks of it.

[PR19_Kit]

Coooer, I've never heard of Monochrome either, but they sure seem to make a good kit of the 107 is anything to go by. 

[Jakko]

It was a decent kit, needed some filler especially around the joint between the air intake and the upper fuselage but no real problems. Moulding and fit in general could have been better, but weren't actually bad. I wouldn't not recommend it

[Old Wombat]

Really good build, Jakko!

But here:

The bomb load seems to be around the maximum an F-107 would probably have been able to handle, which is less than an F-105, so maybe the USAF did pick the better plane mission-wise — though certainly not in terms of looks

I think we'll have to agree to disagree.

[Jakko]

Probably I can't find the F-105 pretty to look at ...

[Weaver]

That looks great - nice one! 

Very nice!  I wish they made an F-107 kit in 1:48, that's mostly what I build in.  Maybe if I can get my hands on an F-100 I could whiff an F-107 or something similar out of it, always liked the F-107.  Some claim that it would have fared better over Vietnam, particularly in air combat against MiGs than the F-105, but I'm not sure about that.  The 107 was basically an F-100 with a J-75 engine and a completely redone nose, and I'm not sure that the F-100 was known for being able to dogfight.

Couple of things:

1. The F-105 did surprisingly well in air-to-air combat over Vietnam, with a positive kill-to-loss ratio despite being a 'bomber'. Yes it weighed a ton and had a sky-high wing loading, but it also had a gun that worked and low-mounted tailplanes that kept working at high AoAs.

2. The big problem with the F-107 in air-to-air combat would have been intake flow distortions at high AoAs: that dorsal intake would have bene sucking in some seriously turbulent air flowing around the front fuselage. You might image the engine flaming out depressinlgy often.


The original F-107 design had a ventral intake, but then they found that shockwaves from the lip caused separation problems with the semi-recessed tac nuke, so they went to the dorsal one instead. I've got a Trumpy F-107 and I've always fancied hacking it around to make the ventral intake version. It looks doable, but it's not straight-forward.