Marineflieger Zwei Hornisse

[SimonR]

Hot on the heels of the German Navy thread...

What if, during the early phases of the Tornado project, the complex integration of the German designed flight control system and the British designed airframe had proved impossible and the project fell apart. Actually, Roland Beaumont describes how this very nearly really happened in his 'Test Pilot' book.  This would have resulted in the cancellation of the MRCA project with the various consortium members casting around for other solutions.

The German Navy fast jet operation soldiered on with the F-104G for Maritime attack and reconnaissance missions into the early 1990s. Eventually funds were found to re-equip the Marineflieger and an order for 58 F/A-18Ds was placed. The greater endurance, two man crew and more sophisticated systems of the Hornet proved a great advance in capability.

This was my therapy after the ordeal of the Silver Cloud MB.5. I slapped together the 1/48 Hasegawa F/A-18D kit, painted it with Halfords car paints and added the decals and Kormoron 2 missiles from the Italeri MFG Tornado.

[K5054NZ]

Cool! I'm liking this one!

[dexter059]

Not just a beautiful build and plane, besides an almost real whatif story....great mate!

Cheers  

[anthonyp]

Now that's just cool looking!  It'd look great in 1/72  

Must... resist... buying.... kit....

   

[nev]

wow, that looks really, really good  

For some reason, having the 2-seater makes it look better, and the black radome is the icing on the cake     Dropped flaps too (enough to start an argument on ARC!    )

BTW the Luftwaffe looked at the F-18 as an F-4F replacement in the early 80s (along with F-15, F-16, F-20 and Mirage 2000) but went with the ICE upgrade instead.

[Spey_Phantom]

That looks just so right, i always wondered what a german F-18 would look like    

[SimonR]

I've just noticed that I've put the nose gear doors on the wrong sides. Nobody else has noticed either, call yourself JMNs? I'd have been defenestrated on Hyperscale for that. I can't be arsed to swap them, so I'll say it was a design mod requested by the Germans.

[Davey B]

mmm... maritime strike...
     

[John Howling Mouse]

Holy crap: fantastic!  Is that ever sleek and clean.  Sweet!

As for the JMN in each of us, I did happen to notice you messed up on the Luftwaffe cross: wrong point of the cross is facing forward!    

[Eddie M.]

I'm a sucker for any Hornet, but this one is especially good looking. Very good pleasing to the eye. :ar:  B)
    Eddie