Round about this time last year, I posted a bloglet,
Fly Past in which I looked at some diecast stealth aircraft. As an aside, I mentioned the appearance of one such design in the Dan Dare strip in the new Eagle comic. Since then, i've found the relevant issue and in the search, came upon a mini comic which came free with the Eagle, promoting another short lived comic, Ring Raiders. Amazingly, the Ring Raiders comic shows the same aircraft again, all illustrated by aeronautic specialist, Ian Kennedy.
As I recall, the Dare strip preceded the Ring Raiders insert by some months, but its basically the same plane.
Ring Raiders was a line of tiny Micro Machine size aircraft made by Matchbox, which were mounted on a thing stand attached to a ring, to facilitate a child 'flying' a squad of planes around attached to their fingers. The comic only lasted a few issues, especially after the free gifts dried up! The front cover of the mini comic shows the large carrier aircraft and Kennedy has depicted it accurately enough that you can see the two carry handles at either end!
Ah it's the Monogram F19 Stealth plane! Around 1987/88 the rumours of the Stealth fighter were at their peak (no one had seen the real F117) and the model kit companies came up with their own designs. Testors(sold by Italeri in Europe) did their version, which was one of the best selling kits of all time. 1/72nd and 1/48th scale versions. Monogram came up with this different design shown in the article also in 1/72 and 1/48. I still have my 1/72nd scale version of this. Revell did a version very similar to the Testors one but with additional curved fins on the nose in 1/144, 1/72 and 1/48 scale. I think the 1/144 is still in the Revell Germany catalogue to this day. Testors/Italeri also came up with a Russian stealth fighter called the Ferret.
ReplyDeleteNice one Yorkue,any danger of a pic of your model?
ReplyDeleteThats as good as Ray, thanks!
ReplyDeleteAhh Beatties - there was one in Liverpool, in St Johns Precinct for years. Think its still there under a different name, still massively overpriced!
ReplyDeleteNope, sadly, it became modelzone and is now shut.
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