1:48 Mirage 5BD BD12 Mirage Farewell Belgian Air Force 1993

A farewell to the Belgian Mirage machines

Belgium introduced Mirage 5 machines at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s in three forms: single-seat strike aircraft, reconnaissance ones with a camera nose and two-seat trainers with a lengthened forward fuselage and a second seat. The letters BD in the fuselage number belong to exactly that training version. At the start of the 1990s some of the aircraft went through a modernization with new avionics, but the fate of the type was already decided and the F-16 took over its role.

The year 1993 was therefore a year of farewells. The machine BD12 received a festive finish on that occasion of the kind usually reserved in Europe for the last flight of a type: striking, conceived across the whole surface and intended for a few last flypasts and static displays. Such a finish as a rule lasts only weeks or months, because after withdrawal an aircraft heads for a museum, a gate guard plinth or the scrapyard, and that is exactly why such finishes are rewarding among modelers.

The Belgian Mirage machines were moreover built at home under license, so a domestic industrial pride went with them as well. The farewell to the type was therefore not only an aviation event, and the finish of the last machine made that plain in colors that could not be confused with the usual gray-green camouflage.

Notes on building

The two-seat version has a different cabin and a different shape of spine, so the matching variant of a kit belongs with the sheet. The longer farewell stripes are best divided by panels and laid gradually, because a continuous band across a curved spine easily ripples. Warm water and a moment of patience do more than pressure with the fingers.