Detail & Scale | F-105 Thunderchief Vol. 8
Reviewed by Brad Hagen
Detail & Scale
F-105 Thunderchief Vol. 8
by Bert Kinzey
Soft Cover
8 ½ X 11
72 pages
US ISBN 0-8168-5020-8
UK ISBN 0-85368-554-1
Up until recently, your only choice for a large scale Thud was the Combat Models "kit". Thanks to Trumpeters long awaited release of not one, but two versions of the F-105, we can have a large scale Thud hogging our shelf space. The Trumpeter kit is soft in detail in a couple areas, this book will show you where you can fill in detail or go hog-wild super detailing.
This book is the typical D & S layout with a short history, detailed photos, a color section, and a section on available models…they do cover the Combat Models F-105. The history section only covers two pages, but that's not what these books are about, how well do they cover the detail?
I have a number of D & S books on WW2 subjects and they have quite a few photos of restored birds which aren't always accurate, this is the only book I have of theirs that covers a jet and the photos are all period photos, and the detail is great. The major sections of the jet are covered and will help in adding in the little details.
A few pictures are somewhat washed out, but they do have drawings of the areas that will help those that want to open up panels all over her. The cockpit is covered by photos and by numbered drawings calling out individual parts.
The color section was a letdown, it does a very good job of covering the cockpit and has two shots of the radar, otherwise it's just overall shots of the F-105, nothing to help in the colors of detail areas.
The 5 view drawings in this book are the best I have seen in this series covering the D and its Thunderstick II avionics conversion, and the G "Wild Weasel".
There is an external store page that goes into more detail than Trumpeters instructions (which is good for the weapons that come in the kit), that covers 40 types of weapons if you want to make your Thud unique.
Overall, this book could use more color detail shots and I wish some of the B&W photos weren't washed out some, but I'm glad I bought the book, as it will help a lot with my Trumpeter F-105D.
© Brad Hagen 2003
This review was published on Saturday, July 02 2011; Last modified on Wednesday, May 18 2016