The Aircraft

The SR-71 was a flying legend. Anyone who wasn’t directly involved with the aircraft knew little about it, and those who were involved weren’t talking. The aircraft’s existence was declassified in 1964, but not much else was said. The problem the SR-71 was created to solve was that the U-2 was too slow, and thus Soviet SAMs could reach it and shoot it down. The SR-71 was supposed to be so fast that SAMs couldn’t catch it.

During this project, I had the help and advice of Ray Knight who lives on the next street over, on the same block as I do. Ray was a fuels man on SR-71s at Beale AFB back in the 80s.

The Ship

Heavily armed, shallow draft ships are known as monitors, named after the USS Monitor from the American Civil War. The USS Monitor carried two large guns in a rotating turret and had a flat hull with low freeboard. A later series of US ships that were designed for coast and harbor defense had a similar design and were generically called monitors. The term came to be applied to a ship that had main armament far beyond what would have been normal for a ship of its size and shallow draft to allow it to operate close inshore for bombardments. Monitors were used by the British during the First World War at Gallipoli and along the coast of occupied France and Belgium. A monitor was even used to shell the German light cruiser SMS Koenigsberg while she was laid up in the Rufiji River in Africa. No other ship type had a shallow enough draft or had heavy enough armament to deal with German cruiser.

Model Art Magazine is a monthly magazine that covers aircraft, armor, ships, and car modeling. Model Art started releasing magazines in 1966 and has evolved from there over the past forty-six years.

In the June issue of Model Art it seems as if they have changed the layout of the magazine. Along with the special feature article there is a separate intro feature article, a special article, and the monthly features.

This issue starts out with an intro feature article. This article is a full detailed build of the Tamiya 1/32 McDonnell Douglas F-4J Phantom II "Black Bunny." This model is just gorgeous. Anything that could be detailed appears to have been. The article includes a multitude of color photos and line drawings of the various details.