A-5 (A3J) Vigilante

[MartG]

Has anyone come across an old Revell A3J ( aka A-5A ) Vigilante kit - what is it like for accuracy ? There's one on fleabay for £16 and I'm wondering if its worth buying to add to my collection of Vigilantes  

[Jeffry Fontaine]

I built that kit when I was in high school sometime around 1969-1970.  The kit was box scale from what I remember and it had a novelty feature of one jet engine that could be removed from the fuselage.  

It was okay for building but it had the usual Revell features such as the raised panel lines.  There were no stores pylons or stores and it had the orginal fuselage sans the trademark hump of the later A-5.  I believe the decals provided were for at least one VAH squadron from the USS Enterprise.

It would be a good starting point for a WHIF project but don't waste your money on it in a bidding war.  

[elmayerle]

I think it's something like 1/96 scale.  The only reason i'd buy it is that certain bits would help in detailing out the Monogram 1/75 A3J/A-5A which is the only one in close to 1/72 scale.  Unfortunately the Monogram kit is truly most ancient and lacks lots of detail all over the place.

I'd certainly use the aft cockpit windows on the Monogram kit since it doesn't have any.  I reckon you'd have to use a spare 172 kit of the RA-5C to fill in a lot of the other missing details on the Monogram A-5A/A3J-1 kit.

Extra note: Since the Monogram 1/75 kit originally came with a "working bomb launcher" and subsequent re-issues deleted everything associated with htat, it has a fuselage tail piece with the cut out already made for the third engine if yo're doing the NAR-349.

[Mossie]

Great Vigi-ceptor Mav!  Goob, no kits that I know of but the three engined interceptor version of the Vigilante ahould be fairly easy to build.  The only real external differences were the third engine, that was placed on top of the other two in a semi-circular fairing.  It seems to have been fed from the existing intakes so you wouldn't have to do anything there.  The canopy would likely have been fully glazed too, maybe use an F-14 canopy, that'll provide you AIM-54's too?   Mirage two saeater canopy might be better though.

[Jeffry Fontaine]

Has anyone given consideration to a French Vigilante?  For the Navy if they ever had a carrier large enough to launch the A-5 and for the Airforce instead of the Mirage IV. 

[Archibald]

Has anyone given consideration to a French Vigilante?  For the Navy if they ever had a carrier large enough to launch the A-5 and for the Airforce instead of the Mirage IV. 

Excellent idea.The carrier would the 45 000 ton "Verdun" or its anglo-french derivative we discussed many times.

Have Atar 9K50 from the Mirage F1, they are not too far in thrust from the original J-79s. Have four drop tanks below the wings and an ASMP on the centerline, now it would look awesome!

O the subject of the three-engine Vigilante, the french could put an SEPR rocket on the "bomb tunnel" albeit I can't see the Aeronavale doing that.
More the Armée de l'Air, which had RATOG on its Mirage IV to shorten their take-off run (making awesome displays at airshows!!!)

Btw before my modelling hiatus I had started modyfying my Vigilante into a three engine variante with a squarre intake below the tail.

[Jeffry Fontaine]

What about a variable geometry wing on the Vigilante?  Something could be cobbled together by kitbashing the A-5 with and F-111 or the F-14 to come up with something that has a swinging wing.  If you use the F-111 wing you will have several wing pylons available, or you could do some tweaking of the F-14 wing to accept the same thing.  The large flat underside would still be ideal for a couple of stores pylons in a similar arrangement to what you find on the Tornado.

[Sentinel Chicken]

I think NASA did some wind tunnel studies on notional VG aircraft based on a swing-wing Vigilante.

Belly pylons are possible, but keep in mind that the main landing gear wells occupy a large area of the central part of the underfuselage area.

[jcf]

From the report in question.

Jon

[Jeffry Fontaine]

I just took a look at Overkiller's 1/72nd scale Airfix TSR.2 build images and had a "moment" when I realized how much the TSR.2 and the Vigilante have in common with the long fuselage.  The open weapons bay is what I was focusing on and I offer up this suggestion for a very expensive kit bash session between the TSR.2 and the Vigilante. 

I was never much impressed with the rearward ejection of the nuclear store with attached fuel tanks as I have always felt that it was bad idea as far as the design and delivery methods.  The fact that the long tube limited the type and size of ordnance carried between the engines made the Vigilante exclusive to the nuclear delivery club with little deviation for carriage of conventional weapons unless you were carrying these on the wing pylons. 

So with that in mind, why not take the weapons bay and doors from the TSR.2 and adapt them to the Vigilante?  I know the main gear wheels are in there somewhere to be an obstacle but the TSR.2 weapons bay is rather long and narrow so it just might fit with minimal fuss.  This modification would provide you with a traditional bomb bay feature on the Vigilante and give you some flexibility in what you want to carry for a load out.  In real life there may have been a proposal for this arrangement but I have yet to see any drawings or supporting images of said modifications.  Hey, JonCF, where are you with your vast reference resources to fill in this void?

[MartG]

A bit like this ?

[Jeffry Fontaine]

A bit like this?

YES!  Exactly like that!  Perfect and just about identical to what I had imagined it would be.  Is that the same length and width as the TSR.2 weapons bay?  Or did you shorten it up a bit?  I see you found a use for the high speed camera pods from the Italeri SR-71 and YF-12 kits. 

[MartG]

It was sized to fit the nuke supplied with the TSR.2 kit - not sure how it measures up compared to the TSR's weapons bay. I reckoned the rear part of the Vigi's original weapons bay would be used for fuel cells.

[Jeffry Fontaine]

It was sized to fit the nuke supplied with the TSR.2 kit - not sure how it measures up compared to the TSR's weapons bay. I reckoned the rear part of the Vigi's original weapons bay would be used for fuel cells.

Sweet.  I figured the same thing with the rear section of the fuselage getting allocated to fuel.  Have you shared those images with the rest of the fourm on the finished projects forum?

[MartG]

Have you shared those images with the rest of the fourm on the finished projects forum?

They were actually from a thread I posted up a couple of years ago - http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,10753.0/highlight,vigilante.html