Spinners

Unless it was released during my 18-month sabbatical, I don't think we have this.

BAC Thunderstrike S.1 - No.617 Squadron, RAF Far East Air Force, 1970

Vickers Valiant B.1 - No.35 Squadron, RAF Far East Air Force, 1955

It's the DAT CAC CA-15 'Kangaroo' !

Sukhoi Su-5 - Soviet Air Force, 1946

(Nurse! My medicene please)

That was exactly my thoughts. Incoming Labour Government in 1964 going for the lowest cost non-British solution whilst still buying something 'supersonic'.

^ 1. I can't see the RAF using a two-word name like 'Freedom Fighter'. 2. The 'Tiger' name had not yet been allocated to the later F-5E. 3. It's an ex-Northrop name. 4. I didn't fancy 'Fang'.

Sud-Aviation Vautour IIA - No.24 Squadron, Indian Air Force, 1965

Mikoyan MiG-22 'Fishpan-A' - Soviet Air Force, 1966 Skin Credit: Sony Tuckson

Grumman F11F-1F Super Tiger - MFG2, Marineflieger, 1963 Skin Credit: 'ravenclaw_007' (but with different tail markings, added weathering and a re-coloured radome).

I'm well aware of that but there are simply no gaps in the MiG designations!

Northrop F-5A Freedom Fighter - MFG2, Marineflieger, 1973

Northrop F-5AP Freedom Fighter - Combat Commander's School, Pakistan Air Force, 1971 Skin Credit: 'ravenclaw_007'

Gloster Garrison B.I - 101 Squadron, RAF Bomber Command, 1937 In 1932, the Air Ministry issued Specification B.9/32 for a twin-engined day bomber with a challenging demand for "higher performance than any preceding bomber aircraft" and, among others, the Gloster Aviation Company responded with a mid-wing cantilever monoplane featuring all-metal stressed-skin construction, retractable landing gear, flaps, a powered dorsal gun turret, a ventral bomb bay and variable-pitch propellers. Like most of the companies tendering to B.9/32, Gloster's design featured the politically-favoured Rolls-Royce Goshawk 'evaporative' (steam cooled) engine but by the end of 1933 Gloster could see that the Goshawk engine would seriously degrade flight performance due to the larger then expected size of the condensors required to turn the steam vapour back into liquid. Gloster's chief designer, Henry Folland, turned to his long-time friends at the Bristol Engine Company who were planning a new 14-cylinder twin-row sleeve valve radial engine as a development of their existing single-row Aquila engine by adding another row of cylinders and transforming it into the Bristol Taurus twin-row radial engine. With an anticipated power output of 1,000 hp and with very low weight, Folland quickly redesigned his bomber around two of the proposed Bristol Taurus engines and boldly reduced the crew from four to two by removing the defensive armanent and the bombardier's station. Folland briefed RAF and Air Ministry officials on his unarmed fast bomber and mainly due to the support of Edward Ellington, the Chief of the Air Staff, Folland was rewarded with a new Specification B.40/34 to cover his new design soon officially named as the Gloster Garrison. Ellington soon followed up this support with a production contract for 250 Gloster Garrison aircraft as part of 'Scheme F' an ambitious plan to increase the size of the Royal Air Force to 187 squadrons within three years to counter the threat from Hitler's Germany. Such was the dominance of "the bomber will always get through" strategy at the time that Ellington demanded five bomber squadrons for every two fighter squadrons and he saw that this unarmed fast bomber could play an important role in his expansion plans. With development of the airframe running slightly ahead of the Taurus engine, all Garrison prototypes were powered by two 840 hp Bristol Mercury VIII radial piston engines and these were good enough to demonstrate the aircraft's performance and handling and also that the design was a good bombing platform. With continued delays in the development of Taurus engine the first production aircraft retained the Bristol Mercury VIII engines and following the completion of handling trials, conducted at the Central Flying School at Upavon in Wiltshire, the Garrison B.I entered RAF squadron service with No.49 Squadron at Scampton in August 1937 and No.101 Squadron at Bircham Newton in October 1937.

Gloster Garrison B.II - 101 Squadron, RAF Bomber Command, 1937

Rockwell F-31K Mustang II - Grupo 6 de Caza, Fuerza Aerea Argentina, 2018 The X-31 experimental jet fighter was designed and built by Rockwell and Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm as part of a joint US/Germany 'Enhanced Fighter Maneuverability' programme to test thrust vectoring technology in both pitch and yaw allied to an advanced flight control system to provide controlled flight at very high angles of attack. Whilst being a radical new design the X-31 used a wide variety of parts from previous production aircraft including the F/A-18 Hornet front fuselage (including the cockpit, ejection seat and canopy) and the F-16 Fighting Falcon's landing gear plus the Cessna Citation's main landing gear wheels and brakes. This dramatically reduced the development time and risk by using flight-qualified components and enabled the first of just two X-31's to take to the air on October 11th, 1990 and over 500 test flights were flown between 1990 and 1995. With a huge fall in defence spending from the 'peace dividend' Rockwell began to look at ways of using many of the X-31's technologies in a low-cost fighter aircraft and in 1992 they proposed an 'F-31' version powered by a non-afterburning version of the General Electric F110 turbofan rated at 16,000lbs dry thrust. Deleting the thrust-vectoring and afterburner reduced a considerable amount of weight from the rear fuselage and Rockwell calculated that the lack of an afterburner would give the small and light F-31 such an increase in range that most missions could be flown without external drop tanks. On the home-front Rockwell proposed an A-31 version to supplement and eventually replace the A-10 Thunderbolt claiming that the A-31 would be about one-half of the cost of the proposed A-16 Fighting Falcon. But Rockwell's main efforts were on the export market and especially the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia and it was interest from the latter and also South Korea that encouraged Rockell to proceed with development at the end of 1993. Marketing their new fighter as the 'F-31 Mustang II' orders were placed by South Korea (72) and Saudi Arabia (59) followed by a home order of 30 aircraft for the US Navy to supplement their F-5E Aggressor Force and then 100 A-31C's for the US Air Force. In December 1998, the Royal New Zealand Air Force became the third export customer when they placed an order for 34 F-31K's to replace it's ageing Skyhawks but the acquisition was cancelled by the new Labour government in March 2000 in a controversial move as "an air combat force is not a priority in the current benign security environment". With most of the F-31K's having already rolled off the production line Rockwell did not take the cancellation lightly and, faced with huge cancellation charges, the New Zealand government breathed a sigh of relief when the Argentinian Government, led by Fernando de la Rúa, negotiated the purchase of the 34 F-34K's for the Fuerza Aerea Argentina at a reduced price. Entering service with Grupo 6 de Caza in August 2001 the F-31K's continue in service based at the Tandil Military Air Base in the Buenos Aires Province. Skin Credit: Gepard

Sukhoi Su-61 'Bullfrog-C'

Anderson Industries Talon - Spectrum Air Corps, 2067

Northrop Grumman F-37A Talon - 2nd Squadron, Belgian Air Component, 2009 Skin Credit: 'HrntFixr'

Mikoyan MiG-21PFM 'Fishbed-F' - Aggressor Flight, Ukrainian Air Force, 2002

McDonnell Douglas F-15A 'Baz' - Aggressor Flight, 133 Squadron, Israeli Air Force, 1992 Skin Credit: Sony Tuckson

MBB Panther - MFG2

I recommend you download the original with it's amazing weapons.

Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm Panther - Marineflieger 1, Deutsche Marine, 2007 Formed as the result of several mergers in the late 1960's the German aerospace manufacturer Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB) became an integral part of the Panavia consortium designing and building the swing-wing Tornado for the air forces of Germany, Italy and the UK. But as early as 1975, MBB began to conduct research into the field of stealth aircraft and during 1981 MBB began developing a design for a viable stealth aircraft supported by funding from the German government. The resultant design was known as 'Project Lampyridae' (Firefly) and independently of American stealth research the Lampyridae used a similar 'faceted' design approach to Lockheed's 'Have Blue' technical demonstrator and the subsequent F-117 Nighthawk stealth attack aircraft. However, shortly after the existence of the Lampyridae project was revealed to the United States (during a technical exchange meeting at MBB's Ottobrunn facility in Bavaria in 1986) the Lampyridae project was suddenly terminated for unspecified reasons but diplomatic pressure on the part of the United States has long been assumed. MBB's dissatisfaction with this decision was short-lived when they were unexpectedly given an invitation to participate in the Grumman X-29 Forward Swept Wing project. The X-29 was a project to design and test a forward-swept wing fighter with canard control surfaces and other innovative aircraft technologies such as the use of computerised fly-by-wire controls and the use of composite materials to control the aeroelastic divergent twisting experienced by forward-swept wings and to reduce weight. The first X-29 took to the air in 1984 and the two X-29s were flight tested during the remainder of the decade but whilst the programme was an overall success there was some disappointment that the X-29 did not demonstrate any noticeable increase in agility - primarily due to the flight control system being moderated to prevent any excessive pitching rotation that could cause the aircraft from departing out of control and/or suffer structural damage. MBB could see that a combination of the stealth qualities of their Project Lampyridae allied to a forward swept-wing design but with larger control surfaces (and faster control surface actuators) would lead to an operational agile stealth fighter aircraft. In 1990, and with the backing of the German government, they launched 'Project Panther' to design and built a new multi-role stealth fighter for the German Air Force and Marineflieger with a projected in-service date of 2002. Using the excuse of reunification costs Chancellor Helmut Kohl made an election promise to cancel the Eurofighter and in mid-1991 German Defence Minister Volker Rühe withdraw Germany from the Eurofighter project and quietly diverted Germany's Eurofighter funding into Project Panther. To avoid the problems associated with concurrently developing a new airframe and a new engine, MBB selected the logical off-the-peg choice of the General Electric F110-GE-132 afterburning turbofan rated at 17,000lbs dry thrust and 32,000lbs thrust with afterburner and the Panther's closely spaced twin engines incorporate MBB designed 2D pitch-axis thrust vectoring nozzles with a range of ±20 degrees. These engines give the Panther a thrust-to-weight ratio greater than unity when in a typical combat configuration and without external stores the aircraft can achieve 'supercruise' to about Mach 1.2 and exceed Mach 2.0 with afterburner. Development moved swiftly during the mid-1990's and the first prototype 'Panther 01' (one of an eventual eleven engineering and manufacturing development aircraft) was unveiled at Ottobrunn, Bavaria on April 1st, 1998 taking to the air on August 15th, 1998 and appearing at the Farnborough air show during the following month where it appeared in the static park before making a low-speed flypast and departure on the final day. The first production contract was signed on January 2nd, 1999 for 170 Panther ADV aircraft (optimised for air defence) and 180 Panther IDS aircraft (optimsed for strike/attack) although differences between the two are confined to avionics and the two variants share virtually identical airframe and propulsion systems. In 2002, a major programme review saw a decrease in the overall number of aircraft to be procured from 350 to 280 and a multi-year procurement plan was implemented to stretch out production with an acceptable increase in the system unit cost (aircraft, training and spare parts) from €70 million per aircraft to €85 million per aircraft although this had further increased to €90 million per aircraft by 2005. Entering service with Marineflieger 1 in 2006 the Panther currently serves with the German Air Force and Marineflieger and has been exported to Denmark, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates and is currently in the running to replace the Finnish Air Force's ageing F/A-18 Hornets in the so-called HX Fighter Programme with a decision now scheduled to take place in 2021. My trawl of the SF1 archives continues...