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ACADEMY 1:72 CESSNA A-37B DRAGONFLY |
Reviewer:
Kevin Ronayne (Kevin.Ronayne@nuigalway.ie)
Kit Review submitted:
30 September 2003
The Cessna A-37 came into being mainly because of U.S. experience in the Vietnam War. It was recognized that in South-East Asia and elsewhere that a small and agile aircraft would be much more effective in the COIN (Counter Insurgence) and close support roles than expensive supersonic fighters that were designed for a completely different type of mission. The Cessna T-37 trainer was chosen as the basic platform to meet this requirement, being suitably cheap and easy to fly.
The basic T-37 airframe was fitted with a GAU-2 7.62mm minigun in the nose with 1,500 rounds of ammunition, and 8 underwing hardpoints. Aircraft and crew survivability were improved with the installation of seal-sealing fuel tanks and cockpit armour, and the wings and undercarriage were strengthened to take the extra weights. This modified design was the A-37A, of which just 39 were built. The aircraft should have had the basic designation AT-37, and the initial development aircraft was in fact designated the YAT-37D - in the US tri-service designation scheme, 'Y' indicates evaluation in a specific role. However, for production aircraft, the AT-37 designation was dropped in favour of the very non-standard A-37, which was given the name Dragonfly.
After initial combat experience with the A-37A's, production switched to the improved A-37B, of which 550 units were built. This introduced a refuelling probe on the nose of the aircraft, more fuel tank protection and slight changes to the engine configuration. In service, the Dragonfly was very successful, although it became increasingly vulnerable as more and better anti-aircraft guns were brought into Southern Vietnam where it mostly operated. After the Vietnam War, the A-37 remained in the COIN role until the early 1980's, when it was switched to the Forward Air Control (FAC) role, where it replaced it's company stable mate, the O-2. In the FAC role, the aircraft was designated the OA-37B, and served alongside the OV-10 Bronco. However, starting in 1992, the OA-37 was gradually withdrawn from the FAC role and replaced by the OA-10A 'Warthog', an altogether tougher and more powerful aircraft.
The qualities of the A-37 made it an attractive aircraft for a number of countries, especially those with a history of buying from the USA. A whole host of Latin American and Asians countries acquired both new and ex-USAF A-37's and OA-37's. South Korea was one such customer, which is probably why we now have this kit.
As is often the case with Academy toolings, one of the first questions is: how closely does it resemble the Hasegawa kit? I have an unbuilt Hasegawa A-37, and it's likely to stay that way by the look of things. Parts of the Academy kit do indeed bear a distinct resemblance to the much older Hasegawa tooling, but that counts for little. This is really a brand new kit, and a very good example of late-1990's technology. The Hasegawa kit looks very old in the tooth by comparison, and it also tries to represent both A and B versions without any different parts, which is apparently a problem. No such difficulties with Academy kit, which costs just STG £5 (about 8.50 Euro) from Hannants, so there is no excuse for not getting as many as you want!
This kit has been reviewed several times before, including a review by Jonathon Mock here on SMAKR. Because of this, there is no need to go into the contents in detail. There are over 100 parts, but about half are for the large weapons set, which is on a sprue that presumably does not come with the Korean Air Force aerobatics version of the kit. The instructions are excellent, although I wish Academy would stop putting the overall paint and decal guides on a separate sheet from the main instructions. Both subject sport the standard USAF South-East Asian camouflage scheme, so the FS colour codes supplied by Academy should easily map to the appropriate shades from the main paint manufacturers. In my case, that is Humbrol.
The two subjects are a USAF machine based at Bien Hoa, Vietnam in 1970, and a ROKAF aircraft from 1996 - no base given. The only (apparent) physical difference between the two aircraft is that the ROKAF machine lacks the IFR probe. In many cases export customers had the probe removed, as they had no need for it. The camouflage schemes differ between the two machines, mainly on the fuselage, and there are subtle differences as well in the minor markings of the two subjects. The comprehensive-looking decal sheet covers all of this. One would like to have seen some more exotic subject choices, but Academy is sensibly serving its main markets. The range of stores is excellent - between this and the Academy OV-10 Bronco kits, there are a lot of spare stores to be collected. More on this later.
In the box, this kit looks to be the proverbial 'shake 'n bake' model. However, even with many comparatively modern kits, this rarely turns out to be the case. To keep this review reasonably short, I will deal mostly with the few faults that I found during building. There is nothing remotely unusual in the design of the kit, so the there is no need to explain most of what I did.
Construction of the cockpit was mostly straightforward, with just a couple of fit problems. Firstly, the rear part of the main cockpit 'tub' did not neatly align with the fuselage. Since you can't see it once everything is assembled, I don't think this is a problem. The main instrument panel was also a bit of a loose fit, and this would be a more visible fault unless corrected. The instrument detail is of the standard relief detail type. In this respect I prefer the Hasegawa kit, which has a very good-looking decal for the instrument panel. This kit includes what looks like a gun sight mounted above the port side of the instrument panel, represented by a small transparent part. The cockpit was painted mostly in Humbrol 140, for the specified FS36231 dark grey.
Before assembling the fuselage halves, I packed as much filler into the nose section and forward fuselage as I could possibly manage. I also had to paint the nose wheel bay at this point. Each fuselage half has an integrally molded roof and rear bulkhead for the bay, but no sidewalls. It would have been very difficult to paint the deepest, darkest corners properly once the fuselage halves were assembled. All the undercarriage bays and the insides of the doors were painted gloss white. The instructions just say 'white' - when quoting generic colours such as this, Academy don't specify the finish, so you just have to know, find out or guess. Of course, the quoted FS colours define the finish in the first digit of their code. The canopy can optionally be assembled in an open position, which is a nice feature but not one that I tend to avail of.
Hardpoint weight limits. The instructions include a chart indicating the possible stores options for each pylon, but is limited to the (admittedly generous) set of stores supplied with the kit. There is much more detail on this supplied below.
The main wings are conventionally molded as a single lower piece and two upper pieces. You can attach one of the upper wings to the lower wing before joining to the fuselage if you want, but you cannot attach both upper wings beforehand, as the parts are just not designed to fit that way. Perhaps the instructions should have made this point clear. I was actually going to do it this way until dry-fitting showed that it wouldn't work. There is very little detail in either the front or rear of the engine bays, apart from a featureless bulkhead towards the front, the halves of which were molded into the upper and lower wings. This is no doubt supposed to represent the engine face - or at least where it would have been - and to make sure that you can't see straight through from front to back!
It was at this point that some surprising fit problems came to light. The fit of the lower wing to fuselage was very bad, in that there was a gap plainly visible running from near the front of the lower wing part all the way to the bulkhead/engine face. The lower edge of the fuselage was flat, but the corresponding area of the lower wing had a curved profile - how did this get past design and testing? Maybe I should dig out the Hasegawa kit and see if it has the same fault. There was also a vertical gap between the bulkheads/engine faces and the side of the fuselage, although not as bad as the first problem. These areas were all corrected with some filler and a little patience, but they should not have been there in the first place.
The undercarriage caused me no problems, apart from the main doors being something of a delicate fit. The main undercarriage bays are properly closed off, with roof detail being on the underside of the upper wings. Before moving on to the external stores, there was a whole plethora of detail items to be attached, including the IFR probe, engine exhaust shield plates, underwing landing lights, flap hinges and a healthy set of antennae and fairings - about 20 parts in all. Including in this is small part (A15) on the nose, offset to starboard and right beside the base of the refuelling probe - I am guessing that this is the business end of the minigun.
I had to remove the locating pins from the pylons to get them to fit to my satisfaction, because otherwise there were noticeable gaps between wing and pylon. Even without the locating pins, it would have been impossible to misplace the pylons, as there are a number of cleat-like details reproduced on the underside of the wing which serve to define where precisely the pylons are fitted. I applied the port underwing roundel in parts after attaching the pylons and painting the wings, which is the way I prefer to handle this scenario. The instructions fail completely to mention this issue.
The wingtip tanks were a something of a loose fit to the wingtips. Apart from these, the supplied stores are:
As mentioned earlier, the weapons chart in the instructions is limited to these supplied stores. However, there is much, much more. For such a small aircraft, the A-37 was able to carry a very wide range of stores, up to a total limit of about 5,000 lbs. So extensive is the list of ordnance that we need two charts to show it all:
How much of these stores were actually used in combat? I don't really know at this point. What would be especially interesting to know is if any of the foreign operators had a preference for some of the more unusual weapons. Anyway, here's the second part:
According to these charts, the outer pylons could carry a 500 lb bomb - a Mk. 82 'slick' or the older AN-M641. Interestingly, the actual weight of both bombs exceeds the supposed outer pylon limit of 500 lbs. The Academy chart limits the outer pylons to the SUU-14A dispensers, so someone is wrong here. The SUU-14 isn't mentioned in the above charts, but it's probably a case of dual identity. Another point: according to these charts, the outer pylons couldn't carry the LAU-3, even though it weighed less than both of the above bombs - maybe this limitation had something to do with the extra stresses caused by firing the rockets. Anyway, there is plenty scope for interesting weapon loads, and plenty scope for research on who used what.
I chose the stores configuration shown on the cover artwork: 4 x drop tanks, 2 x Mk. 82 bombs and 2 x dispensers. When fitted to the pylons, the dispensers showed a slight (rear-facing) downward attitude compared to the other stores. This may be because of the way in which they were used, with munitions being ejected from the back end of the tubes. The instructions correctly note that the tube openings face to the rear. It was tricky to fit the Mk. 82 bombs to the pylons, and downright frustrating trying to attach the drop tanks in the intended manner. In the end, I filled in the locating grooves on the tanks, removed the corresponding notches on the pylons, and attached the tanks directly to the now flush pylon bases. I had to remove a small amount of detail on the top of the tanks to do this properly, but I felt that the bad fit parts left me with little option.
© Kevin Ronayne 2005
The standard camouflage scheme consisted of FS34079 dark green (Hu 116), FS34102 medium green (Hu 117) and FS30219 brown (Hu 118) with FS3662 light grey (Hu 28) undersides. Nothing unusual there. However, during painting I had cause to switch to a second tin of Hu 116. Much to my surprise, the new paint seemed to be slightly lighter in shade. The colour on the cover of the tin (if that's anything to go by) was as dark as it seems to have always been, but the paint was definitely different. So I bought another tin, and yes, the cover colour was now lighter to presumably reflect the new pigment. As if it wasn't bad enough having to grapple with variations, in the real-life paints used on aircraft and other subjects, we have to deal with changes in the kit paints as well. I would like to know what caused Humbrol to change the mixture. I had to recoat all of the dark green areas in the new paint, which was a pain. Also, in less than perfect light conditions, I found it quite difficult to clearly see the demarcation between dark green and medium green areas.
Academy decals are not my favourites, mainly because they are a little on the thick side - I have been spoiled by Italeri and Revell decals. This sheet is very detailed and crisply printed, with just a small amount of white edging around some of the roundels. There was no need for decal setting solutions, just the usual matt overcoat afterwards. I found the placement instructions for some of the forward fuselage decals to be just a little bit confusing.
A couple of minor issues: The drop tank filler caps are painted red on the cover artwork of the USAF aircraft, in the pictures of the completed USAF model, and in the diagrams of the ROKAF aircraft. This is also the case on in several pictures I've seen. However, the kit instructions call for red surround decals to be applied over the caps of the USAF aircraft, while the caps themselves are unmarked. The second item is that if you look closely at the paint guide for the USAF aircraft, there is an inconsistency in the camouflage pattern between the side and top views. The exact same error occurs in the Hasegawa paint guide, which seems to be further evidence of the Japanese kit being used as a starting point for this one. I won't say where the error is, but it will be easily noticed by anyone who tries to follow the camouflage pattern closely.
On the ground, the A-37 should sit more or less 'straight and level'. However, this kit shows a slightly nose down attitude, which would be fine it were a kit of the Fouga Magister. This was the only major accuracy fault that I could find. The kit dimensions seem to be just about perfect. For anyone really concerned about the lack of engine detail, the Eduard 'Zoom' photo-etched set will do the trick, as well as enhancing the cockpit. I'm happy enough with the level of detail in the kit the way it is.
I would give this kit 8 or 8.5 out of 10, with the only real faults being the fit problems mentioned in the review. Overall detail and accuracy are excellent. A high quality A-37 kit was on my 'wish-list' for years, and Academy have obliged. It seems very likely that this kit will remain the definitive 1/72 scale A-37 kit for many years to come. It makes a great companion kit for my Vietnam-era Italeri B-57, which looks enormous beside it.
© Kevin Ronayne 2005
Some day, I'm going to coat the entire model in matt varnish, to get a uniform finish. I have done this with a number of other models, but for some strange reason I did not give this one the full treatment when I built it.
As the A-37 was such a widely used aircraft by the US and it allies in the relatively recent past, there is plenty of relevant material to be found on the World Wide Web. Two of the main sites are:
These web links were a much better source of information than anything I had in print - most of the background material here came from a 1992 Salamander book on US fighters and attack aircraft.
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