Completed Plastic Models: Academy 1/72 North American Rockwell OV-10 Bronco

     As the United States left the nineteen fifties it was apparent that the early Cold War idea of fighting the enemy with long range, unguided weapons was not the answer. Instead, a need was apparent in the end of the decade for an aircraft to perform counter-insurgency (COIN for short) and forward air command (FAC). At the dawn of nineteen sixty there was no aircraft able enough to meet those requirements, the fast F86 Sabre with its swept wing design was only a match for the Russian build Mig 15. The fighters of the fifties, F89, F94, etc. could not fly slow enough and or carry a payload capable of supporting ground troops or even loiter for a reasonable time.

     North American and Rockwell brought forth a joint design to meet the needs of COIN and FAC. Originally known as the NA-300 during the test trials, it beat out all of the other ten proposals from other airplane manufactures. The Bronco saw service in the US Navy, Air Force and Army during its service along with many foreign countries.

      The Academy 1/72 scale version is of the A model, an early variant. The kit assembled very nicely and a surprise for me since I have found many Academy kits to have poor fitting parts and crude detailing. The kits assemble starts as most do with the cockpit interior put together then the main fuselage halves are glued in place. Only two extra items were added to this otherwise out of box build, a single sidewinder from an Eduard set was added with a cover for the heat seeking sensor and also “remove before flight” tags from Eduard were also added. The airplane was hand painted and the gloss coated for decaling. The decals are from the kit and I had no struggle getting them to sit properly on the model. I chose to represent my aircraft as serial number 14694 (reversing the supplied number of 14649) of the 20^th TASS (Tactical Air Support Squadron)/ 504^th TASG (Tactical Air Support Group) stationed at Da Nang Air Base in South Vietnam in 1969. The model was then sprayed with Testors Dull coat and finally lightly weathered with Tamiya powders. I enjoyed this build like most of my builds; it is an inexpensive model for someone with a few kits under their belt to try out. TRWBM.