Medicman wow I would say a stellar job on your first resin pit so far. That is some fine detail painting
I am calling my F-14A Tomcat finished, but First a brief history, I had a blast finding the facts about what ended up being two differant airframes on this build. The airframe you see here, BuNu 162592 of VF-154 and, the one it is painted as BuNu 160403 of VF-41.
On the morning of August 19, two VF-41 "Black Aces" F-14As, "Fast Eagle 102" (CDR Henry 'Hank' Kleeman/LT David 'DJ' Venlet) (BuNo 160403) and "Fast Eagle 107" (LT Lawrence 'Music' Muczynski/LTJG James 'Amos' Anderson) (BuNo 160390), were flying combat air patrol to cover aircraft engaged in a missile exercise. An E-2B Hawkeye from Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron VAW-124 made radar contact with two Sukhoi Su-22 Fitters which had left Okba Ben Nafi Air Base near Tripoli.
The two F-14s were ordered to intercept. Only a few seconds before the crossing, at an estimated distance of 300 m, one of the Libyans fired an AA-2 "Atoll" at one of the F-14s, which missed. Then the two Sukhois flew past the Americans and tried to escape. The Tomcats evaded and were cleared to return fire by their "rules of engagement", which mandated self defense on the initiation of hostile action. The F-14s turned hard port and came behind the Libyan jets. The Americans fired AIM-9L Sidewinders; the first kill is credited to Fast Eagle 102, the second to Fast Eagle 107. Both Libyan pilots ejected.
The official United States Navy report states that both Libyan pilots ejected and were safely recovered, but in the official audio recording of the incident taken from USS Biddle, one of the F-14 pilots states that he saw a Libyan pilot eject, but his parachute failed to open.
Less than an hour later, while the Libyans were conducting a search and rescue operation of their downed pilots, two fully-armed MiG-25s entered the airspace over the Gulf and headed towards the US carriers at Mach 1.5 and conducted a mock attack in the direction of USS Nimitz. Two VF-41 Tomcats and one VF-84 Tomcat headed towards the Libyans, who then turned around. The Tomcats turned home, but had to turn around again when the Libyans headed towards the US carriers once more. After being tracked by the F-14s' radars, the MiGs finally headed home. One more Libyan formation ventured out into the
Gulf towards the US forces later that day. BuNu 160403 is on display at the CAF museum in Texas.
F-14A BuNo 162592, painted as Kleeman and Venlet's F-14 Tomcat (BuNo 160403) on display at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.
Although not as famous a career BuNo 162592 had an interesting career all it's own. Assigned to VF-154, the " Black Knights" on the USS Independance in Febuary of 1999, she was the first to arrive in theater for Desert Storm, but called away before the war broke out. She later returned to fly among 1,356 sorties and combat missions in Iraqi Freedom from the USS Independance along with USS Kittyhawk. When 162592 was taken out of service somewhere after 2003 she then went to a museum in Topika Kansas, then came to the Ronald Regan Library on Augest 22, 2005.
Here is a picture of the F-14 I tried to model
Now for the model, I hope I did it justice
Have to tell you guys I had as much fun researching this build as I did building it. I found a wealth of information at this site, http://www.anft.net/f-14/f14-history.htm I still plan to build a base for it but that will have to wait a month or two.