McDonnell Douglas AV-8B Harrier II — the day-attack jump jet the Marines flew off Tarawa-class decks and tiny forward strips:
By the numbers: 14.1 metres long, 9.25 across that big anhedral wing, a Rolls-Royce Pegasus vectored-thrust turbofan good for about Mach 0.9 — and zero knots straight up, which is the party trick.
Modelled as she sits: the bicycle landing gear with wing outriggers, the LIDS rumble strips under the intakes, the tandem cockpit hump, and the four nozzle fairings along the belly. In the gallery she turns on the floor next to the Sea Harrier’s American cousins; she’s the star of M11’s close-escort work.
Print your own: the STL is in the print bay — 150 mm on the build plate, five dollars, prints flat with the gear down. She balances on the outriggers; ask us how we know.
Two of the campaign’s most-requested shapes are in the gallery and the print bay:
The balloon. Sixty-one metres of gore-seamed envelope with the camera payload slung underneath — the most photographed aerostat of the century, hanging at Angels 34 in M8 waiting for your cannon. The seams are proper meridian rings now, so she reads round from every angle.
The go-fast. Nine metres of smuggler’s speedboat from the M11 siege — low hull, console, twin outboards. She looks fast standing still, which is the entire point of a go-fast.
Both print. The balloon is the tallest piece in the bay at 180 mm ($4), the go-fast a desk-friendly 120 mm ($3) — thirty-six STLs in the fleet bundle now, and yes, the balloon is in it.
The first of three shipmates reporting aboard this push is the fleet’s all-weather truck: an A-6E Intruder of VA-52, the Knight Riders — tail code NL, modex 501, straight off the 1994 Pacific cruise. Ours answers to KNIGHT 501. Her card:
Crew: two, side by side — pilot left, bombardier/navigator right and a half-step back. The wide framed greenhouse is the Intruder’s face.
Powerplant: two Pratt & Whitney J52 turbojets, about 9,300 lbf each, buried in the fuselage with cheek intakes. No afterburners — the A-6 was all about hauling bombs through weather, not speed.
The kit: DIANE attack radar in that dark nose, and on the E-model the chin TRAM turret under the radome — the little ball our model carries. The fixed refuelling probe spears up off the nose: you can’t mistake the silhouette.
1994 squadron: VA-52 Knight Riders, NAS Whidbey Island, Carrier Air Wing 15 — the Pacific fleet’s Intruders in their final seasons. VA-52 stood down in April 1995; only the Sunday Punchers flew the type longer.
Dimensions: 54 ft 9 in long, 53-foot span, rated for 18,000 lb of ordnance — the medium-attack muscle of its day.
In the bay: KNIGHT 501 parks on the Big E’s starboard row, taxis to Cat 2, launches off the bow, flies the pattern and traps back aboard — around the clock. Friendly blue on radar and the map (N), spectate-able with J, and a printable STL on the store.
Second aboard is the hardest-working airframe in the battle group — the Carrier Onboard Delivery bird, a C-2A Greyhound of VRC-30, the Providers: tail code RW, modex 30, answering to PROVIDER 30. Mail, parts, passengers — if it matters, the COD brings it. The card:
Powerplant: two Allison T56-A-425 turboprops, 4,600 shp apiece, swinging four-blade props — the same engines and wing as the E-2 Hawkeye, minus the rotodome.
The airframe: where the Hawkeye carries a radar, the Greyhound carries everything else — a fat cargo hold with an upswept tail and a rear loading ramp. The quad tail (centre fin, two outboards, ventral) is an E-2 hand-me-down.
Capacity: 10,000 lb of cargo or 39 passengers, launched and recovered from the boat like any fighter in the wing.
1994 squadron: VRC-30 Providers, NAS North Island — the Pacific fleet’s only COD squadron that year (VRC-50 decommissioned in ’94), and Det 1’s first cruise ran June to December 1994 aboard Kitty Hawk. Period-perfect for our bay.
Dimensions: 56 ft 10 in long, 80 ft 7 in span — the biggest thing that traps aboard with us.
In the bay: PROVIDER 30 flies the same deck cycle as the bombers — watch a twin-prop COD catch the 3-wire and tell us the Navy isn’t a flying club. Printable STL on the store, ramp and all.
Third aboard is the submarine’s worst day: an S-3B Viking of VS-37, the Sawbucks — NL 700 on the tall fin, answering to SAWBUCK 700. They call the real jet the Hoover for the sound of those two big fans. The card:
Crew: four — two pilots up front, tactical coordinator and sensor operator behind — in a cockpit more airliner than fighter.
Powerplant: two GE TF34 turbofans, 9,275 lbf each, in pods slung under the high wing — the same engine family that powers the A-10.
The kit: sonobuoys by the dozen (the chute dots on our model’s belly), a magnetic anomaly detector in the tail stinger, and room in the bay for torpedoes. The boom out the back gives the profile away every time.
1994 squadron: VS-37 Sawbucks, NAS North Island, Carrier Air Wing 15 — on their final cruise that summer and autumn, which included a famous October week keeping tabs on a Han-class submarine. VS-37 took the 1994 Battle E and stood down 1 March 1995.
Dimensions: 53 ft 4 in long, 68 ft 8 in span, carrier-based from first flight to retirement.
In the bay: SAWBUCK 700 flies the deck cycle off the Big E — launch, pattern, trap, park — boom out, hook down. Blue on the scope and the map, spectate with J, printable STL on the store.
The Air Force heard the Navy was having all the fun and sent over its champion: the F-15 Eagle is now on the flight line as a player mount — press 4 at the plane select. Two things to know up front: it has never lost an air-to-air fight in real life, and it has no tailhook. The card:
Powerplant: two Pratt & Whitney F100s, about 23,800 lbf each in afterburner — the thrust-to-weight that made “not a pound for air-to-ground” a flex.
Performance: Mach 2.5 class, 9 G capable, with a wing so big the jet lands itself when the pilot runs out of ideas. Ours keeps the manners and loses none of the rocket ship.
The record: 104:0 in air-to-air combat by the mid-90s across all operators. We have not nerfed it. Much.
The look: twin tails canted outward, wide flat centre body, canted intake boxes — compass-ghost grey with subdued USAF titles and FF on the fins.
The load: four AMRAAMs on the fuselage corners, Sidewinders on the wings, and the 20mm Vulcan with 500 rounds.
In the bay: runway starts only — SFO, Oakland, Moffett, Alameda — because no tailhook and no catapult bridle means no boat. The plane select will tell you so if you ask nicely. Gallery page 4, printable STL on the store.
And the second Air Force arrival needs no introduction — only a long pause for effect. The A-10 Thunderbolt II, the Warthog, joins as a player mount on 5. It is slow. It is honest. It is built around the largest gun ever bolted into an aeroplane. The card:
The gun: GAU-8 Avenger, seven barrels of 30 mm at up to 4,200 rounds a minute. Ours carries 1,150 — the real combat load — and it is the default weapon, as it should be.
Powerplant: two GE TF34s, 9,065 lbf each, hung on the aft shoulders where ground fire struggles to reach. The podded fans and twin tails make the profile.
The tub: the pilot sits in a titanium bathtub — 1,200 lb of armour — because the Hawg’s office is low and angry.
The wing: long, straight, thick, built for slow loiter over the fight — the opposite philosophy to the Eagle, and proud of it. Stall speed low enough to read headstones.
1994 colours: gunship grey with DM on the fins — the 355th Wing out of Davis-Monthan — and a pair of Sidewinders for self-escort, because even the Hawg carries a knife.
In the bay: runway starts only, no hook, no bridle, no boat — the Air Force way. Try the low pass down the estuary. Gallery page 5, printable STL on the store.
The MiG-29 has been asking for backup, and the Soviets have answered: the Su-27 Flanker is in the game — red stars on the fins, blue 38 on the nose, and a very long memory for grudges. It has no missions yet. It is simply out there, waiting. The card:
Powerplant: two Saturn AL-31Fs, about 27,500 lbf each in afterburner, widely spaced with the famous tail stinger between the nozzles.
The shape: long drooped nose, big blended wing with leading-edge extensions, twin canted tails on the engine nacelles — one of the most elegant fighters ever drawn, and one of the largest.
The party trick: Pugachev’s Cobra — a full-poststall pitch past vertical that the big Sukhoi simply shrugs off. If you see one do it in the merge, you are already behind.
1994 colours: Soviet-era grey-blue with red stars and a blue bort number, the same generation of markings our Fulcrum wears — front-line PVO kit before the roundels changed.
Dimensions: 71 ft 10 in long, 48 ft 3 in span — twelve feet longer than your Hornet, and it turns like it hasn’t heard.
In the bay: a bogie for missions we have yet to fly — it spawns and fights like the MiG. For now, find it on the showroom floor (page 7), watch for the stars, and print one from the store if you want a head start studying it.
The bay’s airspace just got a little more dangerous — and it isn’t even Navy. An AH-64 Apache of the U.S. Army now holds a continuous orbit over the city, callsign K-MAN, olive drab against the dusk. If you see twin stub wings and a chin gun checking you over downtown, that’s him. His card:
Crew: two, in tandem — gunner in the front seat, pilot in the raised rear seat. K-MAN’s front seat belongs to CLARRY G — meet him in the next entry. The stepped glass is the Apache’s silhouette.
Powerplant: two GE T700 turboshafts, about 1,900 shp each, turning a 48-foot four-blade rotor.
Performance: 182 kt flat out, ceiling over 20,000 ft, and it fights — hard — down to nap-of-the-earth.
The kit: the 30mm M230 chain gun under the chin (the little turret under our model’s nose), Hellfire missiles on the stub pylons, and rocket pods inboard. Ours carries all three.
Dimensions: 58 ft nose to tail, 48-foot rotor — smaller than the Seahawk’s footprint, meaner by the pound.
In the bay: K-MAN flies a twelve-point wheel over downtown at a thousand feet and shows up on the tactical map (N) as a green square with his callsign. He’s on gallery page 14/15 — or find him on the showroom floor and click to zoom in. Printable STL on the store, as always.
She’s the newest silhouette over the bay and the highest flier in the pattern: the Grumman E-2C Hawkeye of Airborne Command and Control Squadron 123 — VAW-123, the SCREWTOPS — now wears her squadron mark, the black corkscrew around the rotodome. The dome itself got its geometry sorted this push: a horizontal pancake on its twin struts, spinning about its vertical axis exactly as the real radar does. Her card:
Crew: five. Two pilots up front, three mission specialists in the back — radar officer, control officer, radar operator — the team that talks the fighters onto the bandits.
Powerplant: two Allison T56-A-427 turboprops, 5,100 shp apiece, driving four-bladed props. Max speed around 350 kt, but her living is the loiter: five to six hours on station.
Dimensions: 80 ft 7 in span, 57 ft 9 in long — and the rotodome spans 24 feet, bigger than some fighters’ wings.
Ceiling: 34,700 ft. Range: about 1,460 nautical miles. High enough and patient enough to see the whole theatre.
The kit: AN/APS-145 radar in the dome — tracks thousands of contacts out past 300 miles, friend or foe, sea level or stratosphere.
The squadron: VAW-123 “Screwtops,” established 1967 out of Norfolk — hence the black barber-pole spiral painted around the dome rim, three turns of pure squadron pride. It spins with the radar.
In the bay: she orbits at angels 23 and works the radio the way a real Hawkeye does — BOGEY with clock code, miles and angels; CIVIL TRAFFIC conflicts; FRIENDLIES round-ups; a PICTURE every couple of minutes. Bullseye is Alcatraz. Find her on gallery page 14/14, or spectate her wheel with J.
The thump you hear crossing the cruiser’s wake is her: the Sikorsky SH-60 Seahawk, the fleet’s shipboard helicopter, and the first rotor in Hornet Bay. She spools up on the guided-missile cruiser’s aft deck, flies a four-leg circuit of the group, and puts it back down on a deck that’s still making 15 knots — while two of her sisters shuttle the bay’s five new helipads. Her card:
Crew: three to four — pilot, co-pilot, and sensor/rescue crew in the back.
Powerplant: two GE T700-GE-401 turboshafts, about 1,700 shp each, turning a 53 ft 8 in main rotor.
Performance: 180 kt flat out, 146 kt cruise, with a service ceiling near 12,000 ft and about 450 nautical miles of legs.
Dimensions: 64 ft 10 in nose to tail — compact enough for a frigate’s deck, big enough to haul a torpedo and a winchman.
The kit, by variant: sonobuoys and a MAD bird on the SH-60B, dipping sonar on the SH-60F, Mk 46/50 torpedoes for the kill — plus plane guard, SAR and VERTREP, because somebody has to pick up what the fixed-wings drop.
In the bay: full rotor spool-up with the blur disc fading in past 62% rpm, a moving-deck approach that chases the ship’s own motion, and pad bookings on the shuttle routes — SFO, Oakland, Moffett, Alameda and the SF Heliport. Gallery page 13/14; spectate the circuit with J.
Out to the west of the carrier group, low and slow and endlessly patient, flies the Lockheed P-3 Orion — the Navy’s maritime patrol workhorse since 1962, derived from the Electra airliner and hunting submarines for over sixty years. Ours works an 11×5 km oval at 500 feet and breaks off now and then to eyeball a surface contact up close. Her card:
Crew: eleven — two pilots, a flight engineer, and a full sensor and ordnance team down the back.
Powerplant: four Allison T56-A-14 turboprops, 4,600 shp each — the same engine family as our Hawkeye, twice as many of them.
Performance: 411 kt max, but she earns her pay at 180–200 kt, 500 to 1,500 feet, ten hours on station.
Dimensions: 99 ft 8 in span, 116 ft 10 in long — the biggest aircraft in our gallery that isn’t an airliner.
Ceiling: 28,300 ft. Range: about 2,380 nautical miles.
The kit: the magnetic anomaly detector in the tail stinger — the MAD boom you can see on our model — sonobuoys by the dozen, Mk 46/50 torpedoes and Harpoons in the bay and on the wings.
In the bay: radar-visible but nobody’s target, she announces every visual inspection pass on the radio — 400 metres abeam the contact at 300 feet, then back to the oval. Gallery page 12/14; spectate the hunt with J.
