A post tinged with a little sadness this morning, as I originally intended to expand upon an earlier one about the F19 Spectre Stealth Fighter, which hinges upon some artwork by legendary artist Ian Kennedy. While preparing the material, I discovered that Mr Kennedy passed away last year, at the ripe old age of 89.
Ian was a renowned aeronautical artist, who also drew comics and illustrated 2000ad, Eagle, Commando. He also contributed heavily to Speed and Power and Look and Learn magazines along with Wilf Hardy and his dynamic and technically exacting artwork was always in demand.
Ian came to my attention as my dad subscribed to Air International for many years and I was always fascinated by Wilf Hardy's beautiful cover images and was very pleased to find Ian's very similar style art appear in Speed and Power magazine in the seventies and later in the revivified Eagle comic in the nineties.
Ian covered an 'origin' story for the new Dan Dare with a timeslip element, bringing the classic Dan into a more modern setting, courtesy of an English Electric Lightning piggybacked on a Lancaster Bomber. Somehow, the Lightning is transported into an alternate future, when Dan encounters the Mekon once more.
In the course of the series, he flies various 'real world' aircraft and at one point is shown piloting a 'mud mover' or Stealth Fighter. At the time of writing, the stealth fighter was very much under wraps and little more than a rumour issuing from the Skunk Works, so several claims were made as to what the black project might look like.
Kennedy also included the design, along with the second proposed F-19 model in the Ring Raiders strip in Eagle, which supported the toyline. Ring Raiders and Micro Machines both included the Stealth Fighter in their releases too.
The F-19 Spectre was a curved wing design, which would later be seen to be in complete contrast to the final angular stealth profiles and the second, more popular design, also used a more 'boat-like' aspect.
The Spectre design originated in an illustration in an industry magazine by Loral company, which showed a sleek, futuristic aircraft, which was shortly after designated as the F-19 Spectre.
Several other illustrations of the enigmatic craft appeared shortly after, fuelling the speculation that this was an officially 'leaked' design and represented the future of stealth technology.
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| Wilf Hardy - Air International |
Toy and model makers quickly snapped up the design and Monogram made a large model kit of the Spectre, whilst other diecast and plastic toy companies made small toys. The second F-19 design found favour with computer games manufacturers and the Revell kit of the fighter graced the box cover of Microprose F-19 Stealth Fighter simulation in 1987.
Its interesting to compare both designs to the final release of the F-117 Nighthawk Fighter, which was the vehicle under construction at the time.
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