Re: Spinners' Strike Fighters Thread

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Lavochkin La-166 'Frigate' - 77th Fighter Regiment, Vietnam People's Air Force, 1955









Final Skystreak for now and this uses my 'VPAF Camo'. I'll certainly come back to the Skystreak at some time in the future as it a lot of possible users!

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Chu X-PO Fighter - Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force, 1947













This is the Finnish VL Myrsky masquerading as the Chu X-PO Chinese fighter aircraft which had a slightly worse start than the Ambrosini SS.4 as it was written off on it's first flight whereas the Italian prototype crashed on it's second flight. 'Veltro2K' very kindly made the Myrsky about a year ago now after a suggestion by me so I have the templates for it and really should have done something 'what if' with it before now. The real X-PO is quite an attractive design and whilst I could have used a P-36 I fancied using something rarer to give me an early post-war adversary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chu_X-PO

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Juche K-1 'Gadeu' - Air Fighter Wing 3, Korean Peoples's Army Air Force, 1947







This is the Seversky P-35 Guardsman masquerading as the Juche ('Self-Reliance') K-1 - North Korea's first indigenous fighter aircraft. It's a more interesting way of populating my install with some some adversaries for the 1945 to 1949 era!

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Curtiss-Wright P-55B - 1st American Volunteer Group ('Flying Tigers') China, 1944









I'm a bit short of time tonight so I've cut a few corners here (no aircraft numbers and no panel lines on the vertical tails) but overall it's a pretty good attempt at an AVG Ascender.

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Hispano Aviación HA1155 'Centauro - Ala 36, Ejército del Aire, 1949











A very nice Fiat G.55 Centauro was released recently and a nice blank 'silver' texture has been kindly given to me to play with so I thought I'd do a post-war licence-built version for the Spanish Air Force (neglected by me recently) and it looks quite nice even over the original Desert terrain.

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Messerschmitt 'Libelle' - Luft'46







No input from me on these apart from taking the screenshots but this is the Messerschmitt 'Libelle' the latest release from the SFP1 Development A-Team. An interesting shape!

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Supermarine Spitfire F.24 - Air Wing of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces, 1952







I meant to show these Fijian Spitfires on Thursday as an affectionate nod towards Wales' opponents in the 2015 RWC on that night. A new air force for me so I've designed a roundel and finflash on their behalf. One really nice aspect of 'Strike Fighters' is that you can create your own air force, give it a name and with a couple of simple edits it will show up. You do have to align it though as 'Friendly' or 'Enemy' along Cold War lines. This also allows you to have an 'enemy' Germany for WW2 gameplay and a 'Friendly' Germany for post-war and the reverse with the Soviet Union. I never used to bother but my recent flirtation with the Regia Aeronautica twisted my arm into doing it.

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Gōngyè Hángkōng 'Qīngtíng' - 1st Fighter Regiment, Vietnam Peoples' Air Force, 1953











This is the Messerschmitt Libelle transformed into the fictional Chinese 'Dragonfly' export fighter! I just knocked up a simple template with the barest number of panel lines and added my VPAF camo with grey undersides. I don't like the shape of the Libelle but it is huge fun to fly and actually needs to be de-tuned as it's a bit too sprightly in game.

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Messerschmitt P.1101 Jaguar - Regia Aeronautica, 1946











The Messerschmitt P.1101 was released recently, again by the SFP1 Development A-Team, with a basic Luftwaffe skin so I decided to invest a few hours in making a fairly simple template and using a Regia Aeronautica type skin and decals. I'm not too happy with the fin cross and might try a raked version. BTW the Jaguar name was chosen by me in recognition of the Bell X-5 / Grumman XF10F Jaguar

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Gloster F-73B Meteor - 51st Fighter Interceptor Wing, USAF, 1954











The single-seat F-73C is one from a while back but I now have a F-73B two-seat trainer thanks to the release of a Meteor 'T7.5' by 'Veltro2K' basically a T.7 with an F.8 tail.

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Republic F-7C Thunderstorm - No.6 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force, 1969

During late 1958 the Langley Laboratory made the breakthrough that led to the realisation of a valid variable-sweep wing and by early 1959 Tactical Air Command (TAC) could see that this massive technological breakthrough could be the key to help them in their search for a tactical strike fighter to replace both the F-100 Super Sabre and the F-105 Thunderchief. Pretty soon however the numerical values for unrefuelled range and payload that TAC had attached to their mission requirements had the effect of turning all the paper studies from F-105 sized machines to much larger tactical bombers with a corresponding increase in cost and price and this reduced affordability was of great concern to TAC.

In the Autumn of 1959 TAC wisely decided to split their requirement into a smaller tactical fighter to replace the F-100 and a larger tactical bomber to replace the F-105, B-57 and B-66. The larger aircraft would evolve into Specific Operational Requirement No.183 that would launch the important TFX (tactical fighter experimental) programme and eventually lead (via a tortuous route) to the outstanding but highly compromised F-111 family whilst the smaller aircraft would lead to Specific Operational Requirement No.182 or TAX (tactical aircraft experimental).

Issued in March 1960 SOR182 called for a single-seat tactical fighter aircraft with "reduced dependence of paved runways" and with "the ability to carry a nuclear bomb at supersonic speed at tree-top height". Requests for Proposals were immediately sent out to industry and Republic Aviation's proposal soon gained the support of TAC by virtue of its use of a variable-sweep wing but also by the use of the existing J75 turbojet and F-105 avionics. With the end of F-105 production on the horizon Republic Aviation pushed hard for SOR182/TAX and in February 1961 they were rewarded with a contract for 24 prototype and pre-production YF-110 aircraft and 400 production F-110A machines and Republic wasted no time in bestowing the name of 'Thunderstorm' to the latest of their long line of fighter aircraft.

Republic Aviation were fortunate in being awarded the contract before Secretary of Defence Robert S. McNamara had got into his stride and the programme largely escaped McNamara and his whiz-kids. Development moved swiftly and during 1962 the programme was re-designated F-7 under the new tri-service designation scheme and the first prototype took to the air on December 22nd 1962 a full year ahead of the F-111A. Entering service in June 1965 the F-7A was followed by the F-7B two-seat trainer version and the more advanced F-7C version that first deployed to Vietnam in March 1968 when a two-squadron wing transferred to Takhli Royal Thia AFB, Thailand in a deployment called 'Combat Lancer'. In May 1968 Australia became the first export customer for the Thunderstorm purchasing 8 F-7B and 32 F-7C aircraft to equip No.1 Squadron and No.6 Squadron with the latter deploying to Phan Rang Air Base on South Vietnam's southern coast serving alongside the USAF's 35th Tactical Fighter Wing until June 1971.













The Thunderstorm created from the 'Flogger' is one of my favourite 'what ifs' and if you search 'Thunderstorm' within this thread you'll see the original USAF version (with the same backstory given above apart from the Aussie export) plus the USMC version based on the duck-nose MiG-27, the USN's F-7J and the Belgian export version.

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Mikoyan MiG-27MA 'Flogger-J' - Grupo 6, Fuerza Aérea Argentina, 1991













I was tempted to make this an export version of the Republic F-7M Thunderstorm but decided to keep it 'real' (ha!) by making it a Mikoyan product. Perhaps the Soviets, in the immediate aftermath of the Falklands War, decided to interfere by gifting Argentina with Floggers (Fighter and Attack versions) and Argentina cunningly timed their attack to coincide with the UK's commitment to 'Desert Storm'. Food for thought. Anyway, this is the stock Soviet Grey skin meant for the MiG-23P adapted to fit the MiG-27 - you'll note that I've chosen to use roundels on both wings, just personal choice really. Today's Argentine Mirages are so devoid of markings!

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Mikoyan MiG-37 'Ferret-B' - Russian Air Force, 2019















This is an alternate F-32 design masquerading as the MiG-37 'Ferret' which we all know was designed by Testors/Italeri!!

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McDonnell Douglas Phantom FG.3 - No.4 Squadron, RAF Germany, 1983







An exciting new release today - a single seat Spey Phantom! This was created by 'Sundowner' who, apart from being a superb skinner, has also done a Spey F-4E and a Spey RF-4. No input from me here - just the screenshots. Note the parked Merlin ADV's 

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Nakajima Ki-8 - 101st Sentai, Imperial Japanese Army Air Force, 1938







A Finnish Gauntlet was released today by the SFP1 Dev A-Team with three camo schemes and the green skin has been adapted by me to make a Japanese Gauntlet using the markings I created for my IJAAF Spitfire a few years ago. I've not had time to make numbers for it because today is RWC Final Day. The winning country will be used as tomorrow's 'Whif' nation!