Hasegawa Lockheed F-104J/CF-104 Starfighter 1:72

Review by: Tom Barták 

Background Info

The Starfighter, one of the USAF’s “Century Series” planes, represents an exceptional design and performance even today. This fighter-interceptor was designed by the famous Clarence “Kelly” Johnson. He visited Korea in 1951 and asked USAF pilots what kind of aircraft they wanted. F-86 Sabres deployed in Korea at that time were outperformed by MiG-15s, so the pilots requested small and simple aircraft with excellent performance.

Johnson chose a minimalistic approach – most aerodynamically efficient airframe possible around a single powerful J79 engine. The first prototype’s maiden flight took place in 1954 and Starfighter entered USAF service in 1958. The last USAF Starfighters left active service in 1969.

By the time German Luftwaffe was looking for multirole combat aircraft, the Starfighter was reworked into an all-weather ground-attack, reconnaissance and interceptor aircraft – the F-104G – and later became standard combat aircraft in other NATO countries as well.

Its star kept shining even further as the Japanese version F-104J was introduced. This was basically F-104G without air-to-ground capabilities. Most of the “Eikos” (Japanese name for the Starfighter) were built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Lockheed’s license. They were replaced in 1980’s by Japanese built F-15s.

References Used

Thanks to the Starfighter’s long service in many countries, it is very easy to find reference photos on the Internet. From all the sites I’ve found I recommend the following:

http://www.mamboccv.com/F-104.html

http://www.starfighters.nl/

http://www.916-starfighter.de/main.htm

http://www.i-f-s.nl/

There are some books about Starfighter as well, but as I have enough photos from the Internet I will not be consulting any of these during the build.

The Kit and Extras

As memory serves me correctly, this kit was originally released in late 1980s and Hasegawa did quite a good job. Even if you decide to build it straight from the box, you will get a very nice and detailed model. The parts are moulded in grey plastic, with no or very little flash. Panel lines are bit shallow and I think it will be necessary to re-scribe them in order to oil-based weathering techniques to work properly.

Click Image to Enlarge/go back.

The kit is provided with two decal sheets – one for Canadian CF-104 with three marking options:

• No. 417 squadron – overall silver,
• No. 439 squadron – overall dark green,
• 1^st Canadian Air Group – dark green/dark sea gray/light gray camouflage

…and one sheet for Japanese F-104J:

• 207^th squadron – overall light gray with white wings,
• 204^th squadron – overall light gray with white wings; 204^th squadron 20^th anniversary special marking,
• 207^th squadron – gray/gray camouflage with shark mouth.

The decal sheet for F-104J contains additional code numbers and squadron tail badges, so in total you can choose from 12 marking options. Decals are thick and partly out of register so you’ll probably need to source some additional decals or consider using masks for the national insignia.

Many detail sets are currently available for this kit and in my build that has recently started in Build Now I will be using an Eduard PE set and a CMK resin exterior set. The PE set consists of two frets and acetate sheet with instrument panel dials and provides detail for almost every part of the kit. The most impressive seems to be the exhaust nozzle replacement made of so many parts that I’m slightly doubtful I can put them all together.

CMK exterior set contains two electronic bays with their covers and a radar antenna. The bays look good and will add another level of detail to the kit. The antenna is partly damaged – it has a hole in the middle (probably a cracked bubble) – but this could maybe be replaced by cutting an appropriate shape from a styrene sheet? We’ll see!

Conclusion

With the various releases by Hasegawa of this kit in all its varying forms, you are bound to find one that suits you. This kit is of generally good quality and must be recommended. The old ESCI kit wasn’t bad either but is of course gone now. Good luck with your Starfighter project and I hope you enjoy mine in SMN.

Tom B.