1:72 North American FJ FURY (wet decals)

The naval cousin of the Sabre

The FJ Fury family grew from a simple idea: take the proven swept-wing airplane of the land-based air force and adapt it to the deck. Step by step this produced machines with sturdier landing gear, an arrestor hook, folding wings and finally a wing of their own with greater chord. The last version had little left in common with its ancestor and served mainly as an attack aircraft able to carry bombs and rockets.

The subjects on the sheet cover three sub-versions. The oldest is a machine with leading-edge slats of a squadron from Oceana in the autumn of 1955, followed by aircraft from the deck of the Bennington, machines of Marine Corps units from the Japanese base at Atsugi and from Taiwan, and one aircraft from the training base at Memphis. The dates stay between 1955 and 1958, the time when American carrier aviation was moving to supersonic equipment and the Furies were at the height of their service.

Before you start gluing:

• the individual sub-versions differ in wing shape and in armament
• the Navy and the Marine Corps used different fuselage lettering
• the gloss sea blue finish tolerates very little sanding

For a modeler this is a practical set: six machines mean six different color bands, numbers and unit emblems. The airplane model is obtained separately, as the sheet carries markings only.

An interesting feature of the period is also how quickly the markings changed. Bands on the fin, colored rings around the fuselage and squadron emblems appeared and vanished within a single season. Six subjects on one sheet therefore allow several forms of the same aircraft to be shown within a span of only three years.