Republic F-84G Thunderjet by Tamiya

1/72 scale
Kit No. 60745
Retail: $28.00 – 164.00 (Thank you, Tariffs)
Decals: Two versions – both USAF; 508th Strategic Fighter Wing, Turner AFB, Georgia, 1956; and 58th Fighter Bomber Squadron, Taegu, South Korea, 1952.
Comments: Detailed cockpit, two-part canopy, option to display detailed nose gun bay, choice of underwing ordnance (drop tanks or 500 lb. bombs), option for rocket assisted take-off (RATO) canisters, boxed in wheel wells with nice well detail

History

The Republic F-84 was the first U.S. Air Force fighter to enter service after World War II, and the Air Force’s third jet-propelled fighter, following the groundbreaking but less-than-spectacular Bell P-59 Airacomet and the Lockheed F-80, which took flight in January 1944 but was still in development as the war ended in 1945. In practical use, the F-84 was in reality a fighter-bomber, and would see heavy use as the primary strike aircraft of the Air Force during the Korean War, flying interdiction missions against North Korean and Chinese supply lines as well as direct air support missions backing up United Nations’ infantry forces on the front lines. The F-84 was also the first USAF fighter capable of carrying a tactical nuclear weapon, and has the distinction of being the last straight-winged fighter bomber to enter Air Force service.

Originating from a 1944 United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) proposal for a “day fighter” that would replace the P-47 Thunderbolt, the F-84 first flew on February 28,1946, entering service in November 1947. In the early years of the Cold War, the F-84 was the standard fighter escort for the bomber force of the USAF’s Strategic Air Command (SAC). During its development, the second XP-84 set a U.S. national speed record of 607.2 mph on September 8, 1946, but failed to match the world speed record of 612.2 mph (985.2 km/h) set the day before by a British Gloster Meteor.

The F-84’s first mission was to escort Strategic Air Command B-36 and B-47 bombers stationed at nuclear alert bases all over the world. With in-flight refueling capability, F-84G’s could escort SAC bombers to any target in the Soviet Union — with the help of Boeing’s then-new system using a “flying boom” from the tanker aircraft that plugged into a receptacle in the upper left wing. With this new system, the F-84 pioneered the practice of aerial refueling for jet fighters. In a demonstration of the Air Force’s long-range fighter escort capability in August 1953, a large flight of F-84G’s, refueled in mid-air by SAC KC-97 tankers, flew 4,485 miles non-stop from Turner Air Force Base in Georgia to RAF Lakenheath in the United Kingdom.

Codenamed “Operation Longstride,” it was at that time the longest mass movement of fighter-bombers in history, and the greatest distance ever flown non-stop by single-engine jet fighters. F-84 were also deployed in two different programs providing escort for long-range B-36 Peacemaker bombers. One aspect of the F-84 design that affected its performance was its coaxial turbojet which dominated the inner workings of the fuselage. This meant that the fuel had to be carried in the Thunderjet’s rather thick, laminar flow wings. Early on, wingtip tanks were added to the design to extend the fighter’s range without wind tunnel tests being conducted to determine the impact of this change on performance. Since the tip tanks were somewhat large in proportion to the rest of the aircraft, this inevitably increased drag, but the designers were clearly willing to make this trade for greater range.

Thunderjets (the F-84E) entered service in Korea in December 1950 and were initially used as escorts for B-29 bombers. But the communists’ deployment of the MiG-15 against the B-29 daytime raids exposed both the B-29’s vulnerability and the F-84’s deficiencies against this new, swept-wing adversary. F-84’s were subsequently widely used for ground support operations, with increasing success. The F-84G was not deployed to Korea until the summer of 1952, but from that point on, it became the premiere fighter-bomber for the United Nations forces in the theatre.

The F-84G

According to the requirements of Republic Aviation’s original contract with the Air Force, there was not supposed to be an F-84G, at least not one with straight wings. The F-84E was scheduled to be the final straight wing variant in the series, but problems with the development of the swept-wing F-84F left the Air Force with no alternative except to keep the straight wing production line running, which led to the F-84 G. The irony is that the “interim” F-84G was the most numerous variant in the entire series.

The F-84G was the first jet fighter capable of carrying a nuclear bomb on a specially designed left inboard weapons pylon, which allowed it to deliver a nuclear strike comparable to the bombings of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. This made the F-84 the most powerful fighter of it’s era.

Although the F-84 had a distinguished record in Korea, it had difficulty taking on the MiG-15. Owing to its thick, straight wing, the Thunderjet could reach a maximum speed of Mach 0.82 at full throttle and low altitude, but could not reach such speeds at the higher altitudes at which it was likely to encounter the MiG. It had sufficient power to fly faster at low altitudes, but exceeding its Mach limit down low resulted in a violent pitch-up and structural failure, causing the wings to break off. The top speed limitation proved troublesome against the MiG-15s in Korea. Slower than the MiG, the F-84 was also unable to turn tightly with a maximum instantaneous-turn load of only 3 gs followed by rapid loss of airspeed. These factors helped relegate it to the low-altitude interdiction operations at which it excelled.

Devastating F-84 raids on hydroelectric dams on May 13 and May 16, 1953 caused the loss of all electric power to North Korea, for example. During the Korean War, F-84 pilots flew 86,408 missions, dropped 50,427 tons of bombs, and shot down at least eight MiG-15 fighters.

Under the Mutual Defense Assistance Program, some 2,000 F-84’s were supplied to many European air forces to help bring NATO up to strength during the early and most insecure days of the Cold War. The last straight-wing F-84’s were retired from the U.S. Air National Guard in 1957, and the last swept-wing F-84F’s were retired from the ANG in 1971.

Construction

Construction of this kit was a dream, everything went together smoothly — with the lone exception of the clear plastic parts for the tiny lights on the forward end of the wing tip tanks. These miniscule parts are extremely fiddly and easy to lose. Good luck finding them again if you should experience the misfortune of having one of them pop out of your tweezers. I managed to get them both on partly by making certain that the model was no more than two inches away from the spot at which I severed the little light from the sprue using an Xacto blade.

The cockpit is exceptionally well detailed for this scale, and includes a three-part ejection seat, raised detail on the main and side instrument panels, and a separately mounted control yoke and rudder pedals, plus a detailed two-part gun sight. Above average detail also distinguish the boxed in wheel wells and the gun bay. A note about the gun compartment in the nose. If you opt to use Part A9 depicting the gun bay assembly, then you must display the gun bay open because the gun bay door will not close flush with the fuselage with the gun bay assembly cemented in. I confess this was not entirely clear to me from the directions, and Step 3, where the gun bay assembly is added, certainly does not explain this, visually or otherwise. So, if you want your F-84 displayed in a “clean configuration” with the gun bay all buttoned up, disregard Part A9 and the gun bay door will go on smooth as silk.

The air intake is nicely detailed, as are the landing gear, although you may want a liquid cement with capillary action that “melts” plastic parts together to ensure that the nose cap, Part A6, goes on smoothly and leaves no hint of a visible gap between itself and the rest of the fuselage. The instructions indicate that the inboard landing gear doors should be cemented in at the same time that the upper and lower halves of the wings are glued together, but I added those doors long afterwards in the final stages of construction with no problem — just one indication of how well-engineered Tamiya kits are.

The kit offers modelers a choice between drop tanks and 500 lb. bombs mounted at the wing roots on pylons that are integrally molded into the parts for the lower halves of the wings. Construction proceeded rapidly until I got to the canopy. Masking the greenhouse canopy was a challenge; although Eduard offers a masking kit for Tamiya’s F-84G, I opted to mask the canopy myself using Tamiya tape. This was cheaper but quite time-consuming, and led to a slow-down in production. Although all prior straight-wing versions of the F-84, notably the B through E, featured a bubble canopy, which continued with the swept wing F-84F, for some reason the straight-wing G entailed a design change to the greenhouse canopy that harked back to WWII.

Painting

The F-84 is painted in a mix of Humbrol and Testors enamels for the interior surfaces, and Model Master Aluminum Plate, a buffing metallizer, for the exterior surface (with Vallejo acrylic Black applied first as a primer). The cockpit was done in Humbrol enamels, Coal Black Satin for the instrument panels and Interior Green for all other surfaces, with the exception of Gunze Sangyo Olive Drab for the ejection seat cushion, head rest, and exterior anti-glare panels along the nose and spine of the aircraft. Wheel wells were painted in Testors Flat Zinc Chromate.

Decals

I used the kit decals for the 508th Strategic Fighter Wing based at Turner AFB, Georgia. The 508th deployed to Japan during the Korean War, from February to May 1953, and again during 1954.

Conclusion

This kit is an excellently detailed version of the F-84 that was a workhorse fighter-bomber in Korea for the final year of the war. Highly recommended.

References

• A Handbook of Fighter Aircraft by Francis Crosby; Copyright 2003 Anness Publishing, Ltd.; London.
• Flying Combat Aircraft of the USAAF-USAF, edtied by Robin Higham and Abigail T. Sidall; Copyright 1975 Iowa State University Press; Ames, Iowa.
• “Warplane Classic: Republic F-84 Thunderjet, Thunderstreak and Thunderflash” by David Willis; International Air Power Review. Vol. 24, 2008.
• F-84 Thunderjet in Action by Larry Davis; Squadron Signal Publications, Carrolton, Texas (no copyright date provided).