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night turret jet fighter NF.6

SAAB-Fairchild F-13A - 4451st Tactical Squadron, USAF, 1985 During mid-1965 with attrition rates rising as the Vietnam conflict progressed (sic) the USAF's plans for re-equipping the ADC and ANG interceptor squadrons with F-4C's fell apart. Undaunted they launched a quick study into an off-the-shelf purchase of an alternative interceptor to replace the F-102's and supplement the F-106's and looked at the BAC Lightning, the Dassault Mirage IIIC, the Saab Draken J-35F and the homegrown Lockheed Starfighter 'ADC' (an F-104G optimised for air-defense duties). With some considerable weighting given in the detailed analysis to low cost the Saab Draken soon became the front-runner by being the only aircraft with a fly-away price below $1M but, in fact, the USAF study team scored the Draken highly in most areas. In July 1966 the USAF announced that Saab's outstanding J-35F was the winner of the competition and that Fairchild, who had recently taken over Republic Aviation, were to partner Saab in producing the aircraft by now redesignated F-13 (despite objections from Fairchild to the 'unlucky' number although Saab didn't seem too bothered). Entering service with the Florida Air National Guard in March 1968 the F-13 was initially viewed as the poor relation by the F-106 squadrons, a situation that soon changed with the success of the F-13 in the 1970 William Tell competition. F-13's served until the mid-1980's when they were generally replaced by F-16A's although one squadron remained in service until 1990 at the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada in a ruse designed to mask operations of the F-117 Stealth Fighter. During the flight-testing and the early service years of the F-117A 'Nighthawk' the F-13A Draken was used as a surrogate aircraft to maintain pilot proficiency and to provide part of an eloborate cover story for the existence of the 4450th Tactical Group. Whilst in no way similar to the shape of the F-117A the rakish lines of the Draken did have an unusual planform and was therefore chosen as the 'cover' aircraft for the specially created 4451st Tactical Squadron based at Tonopah. It is believed that 18 F-13A's were given a modest refurbishment to extend their operational lives and initially wore a two-tone grey scheme to give them more of an operational 'front-line' appearance. F-13A's entered service with the 4451st TS at Nellis AFB in May 1981 and wore 'LV' tailcodes due to their proximity to Las Vegas. From about 1983 at least half of the F-13A's were re-painted matt black and operated from Tonopah at times of day to to coincide with the F-117A test programme and it became a deliberate policy to park some of the matt black F-13A's out in the open so as to give the impression that Tonopah was simply a normal operational F-13A base. At least four derelict ex-Florida ANG F-13A's arrived by low-loader and were given an overall coat of matt black paint to help maintain this impression. The F-13A's were extremely popular with the pilots of the 4451st TS and were often used as 'Red' assets in Red Flag exercises and even made the occasional guest appearance in 'Constant Peg' operations when MiG's became unserviceable or simply to provide dissimilar bogeys. As the F-117A gradually moved from 'black' to 'grey' towards the end of the 1980's the 4451st TS's F-13A operations slowly dwindled and the unit was disbanded on April 30th, 1990. An old backstory from 2010!

Spitfire over London

A splash of color on an otherwise gray morning....... Someone is about to have their day ruined.........

I found an old map of Fairford in the timeframe of the 1960th and it showed a base with 3 runways. Thatswhy i made some changes:

Eiffel Team William Tell '92

Sitrep RAF Fairford: More buildings, reworked parking areas. Next step will be to find the missing texture of the runway and finally to place the parking planes. Edit: I forgot to show you Dunsfold:

And the latest book I am reading is about,.

Update Su-24

first test flight with my new GPU-2/A gun pod on a A-4F Skyhawk

well, we've always had more room than...... any of the old countries

RAF Fairford (WIP). What a big base. If americans build something they build it big. Parts of the texture of the runway is missing. Some buildings and some parking areas are missing too. Will come later.

just a quick status report: Taiwan Straits terrain revamp nearly done. I should be able to release it over the weekend North Cape revamp has to be gone over again, as I forgot where I left off with it's rebuild! (oh, dopey me!) ArmourDave's F-105 Thunderchiefs nearly done; just trying to run down some more nose art images The F3D/EF-10 Skyknight has all it's skins, decals and ini work completed, I'm just awaiting to see if I get a new LOD with certain mesh fixes before release. If I don't have it before the end of they year, I"ll release it "as is" calling it a "provisional Beta" after Jan 1 next year. It'll be spllit into the F3D-2 and EF-10 as I've used 2 different cockpits for it's intended use in the Fleet (night fighter - F3D, Escort Jammer - EF-10)

There's a rivet missing FLOGGER23, I'm not downloading it when it comes out... Seriously looking good man.

Desert Deployment

RAF in the 80's

look sharp!!

Difficult to see the difference between vietnamese and chinese insignias.

A well-camouflaged Type 625E will RUIN your day..........

oh yeah, forgot about the Big 22....

Eiffel Eagles '93

Just a couple of Thuds, from the upcoming salvage operation ...

Albatros

Russian Attack Helicopters Mil Mi-28N, Mi-28NM and Kamov Ka-52 Alligator ;)

Deep Blue

Not got those in my list, but if you're happy to send them over that would be great thank you! No worries on the Ka-27, I have found a low(ish) poly one online I can use, it's not perfect but it'll do the job: The list of WW2 statics that I've collated from your terrains are so far are: A5MClaude, A6M2N, A6M3, B-17F, B-17G, Beaufighter, Beaufort, Bf109E, Bf109F, Bf109G, BF110C, Blenheim1, Fw190A, Hurricane1, Hurricane2, Hurricane2C, Hurricane2D, Hurricane2_Hydro, Ju87B, Ju88, Ki201, Ki45Nick, Ki48Lily, Kittyhawk, Lancaster, Me262, P38F, P38J, P47D, P51D, Q1WLorna, Re2000, Re2001, SB17, Spitfire1, Spitfire8C, Spitfire9, SpitfireVBT, Warhawk. Here's a few other statics I've been working on: TMF F-5E and KC-135R Russo's Hawk and YEYEYE's Mi-24 from the modder's repository C-17

The B-24J Liberator from YAP.....from a long time ago.

Turn and burn.

Stupid thing, that the AI is not able to fly in a Death Star trench. Otherwise it would be a cool scenario.

three iconic fighters

F-4E with AN/ARN-101 from the 3rd TFS / 3rd TFW based at Clark AFB , armed with 2 GBU-15 and AN/AXQ-14 data link pod

Korea 85

North Korea 1968.....

Scissors! Scissors! Scissors!

I need to practice more with the F-4B, or any F-4 for that matter landing it on the deck.

Two out of three (ain't bad)

worst movie Spielberg ever made. totally lame -- sorry for the sidetrack!

Close call with 20 MIGS as F-106's fly EC-121 escort during USS Puablo incident 94th FIS deployed to Osan AB, Korea. By Bruce Gordon F-106 pilot 94th FIS. The tactics they would have used with the F-106 in the last page are fascinating. I've always thought of the F-106 in its context as a bomber interceptor not as a fighter on CAP engaging other fighters! Remember this is pre project 'Six shooter' so these F-106 have no gun and only two shots of missiles each as the F-106 fired two of its four Falcon missiles with each shot- it could not fire missiles singularly excpt for the nuclear AIR-2 Genie rocket.

dtmdragon, have you watched Bruce Gordon's videos on Youtube? https://www.youtube.com/user/spiritofattack/videos