RNLAF F-104 Starfighter, 322 Sqn, Leeuwarden AB, c. 1980

Here is my fourth and final (for now) Dutch jet, the awesome F-104 Starfighter! The Starfighter could achieve speeds of Mach 2, which made it great at intercepting Russian bombers. Its tiny wings, however, meant that it wasn’t particularly manoeuvrable and needed to land at exceptionally high speeds so it wouldn’t drop out of the sky.

The F-104 is a bit of an infamous aircraft. There was a rather large scandal when it was found out that Lockheed had bribed several foreign military and political figures to secure purchase contracts. Among these was the Dutch Prince-Consort Bernhard, who as a result was forced to resign as Inspector-General of the Dutch Armed Forces and was not allowed to wear his military uniform in public anymore. Additionally, high accident rates earned the jet the unfortunate nicknames of Widowmaker and Flying Coffin. That said, though, it’s a really pretty aircraft...

The Dutch Air Force operated the F-104 from 1962 to 1984, alongside the NF-5 Freedomfighter that I built earlier. This one was operated by 322 Sqn out of Leeuwarden. The model is by Italeri, built straight out of the box but mounted on a metal stand by JC Wings.

Assembly was very straightforward. Only a little bit of filling and sanding was required, particularly around the openable airbrakes. There was one minor problem, however. The paint guide only provide you with instructions for the early, all-grey version of the jet as it arrived straight from the factory. I, however, preferred to paint my F-104 in the common two-tone camouflage scheme also seen on my NF-5 and F-84F.

Starfighter D-6654 after having been repainted.

A bit of googling taught me that the D-6654, decals for which are supplied in the box, was also repainted at some point. Even better, the markings on the camouflaged jet were almost identical to when it was still all grey. In other words, I could just paint it the way I wanted to, without having to buy any aftermarket decals. Great!

Painting instructions for the exact camouflage pattern were found on the very useful Dutch IPMS model website. The only real difficulty was to get a nice, straight line between the colours on the top and bottom of the aircraft. Using masking tape when brush painting never works properly for me, so there was some cleaning up afterwords. But the end result is pretty cool, I think!

Paints used (Vallejo):

Camouflage: 70.992 Neutral Grey and 70.887 US Olive Drab

Bottom: mix of 70.870 Medium Sea Grey and 70.883 Silver Grey

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