What’s this, a
missile being featured in an article on ARC? Besides the fact that I really like
building models of missiles and rockets, the Boeing Bomarc is linked rather
closely with a famous Canadian aircraft, the Avro Arrow. I have read that the
politics behind the cancellation of the Arrow may have been due in part to the
availability of the Bomarc. As the Arrow increased in cost, Boeing (or the
US Government) stepped in and offered the Bomarc as a less expense and
off-the-shelf alternative to the Arrow. After the cancellation of the
CF-105 Arrow, Canada was still faced with a need to defend its skies from the
threat of Russian nuclear warhead, whether from ICBMs or bombers. The following
is a quote from a web page ( http://exn.ca/flightdeck/arrow/aftermath.cfm
) devoted to the history of the Arrow: “To appreciate the situation of
Canadian air defense in the post-Arrow period it helps to look at the Bomarc
missile, which contributed greatly to the feeling that the Arrow was no longer
needed. The Bomarc was an unmanned missile that carried a nuclear warhead. It
wasn’t big on accuracy, so it could only take out a nuclear-missile-bearing
enemy by detonating a nuclear explosion close to it. Needless to say, this
wasn’t a particularly advantageous situation for Canadians, who would get most
of the radioactive fallout on their territory. If the Americans set up the
Bomarc along the northern border of their country, as they planned, the
detonation would take place over Canada’s most populated areas. This
undesirable scenario played a big part in influencing Defense Minister George
Pearkes’ decision to acquire two Bomarc bases in the North of Quebec and
Ontario at least the battle would be carried away from Montreal and
Toronto.”
Interestingly, the Americans were already phasing out the use of the Bomarc as
being obsolete just as the Canadian units were becoming operational. The Boeing
CIM-10B Bomarc nuclear-armed surface-to-air interceptor missile eventually
equipped 446 and 447 Squadrons in North Bay, Ontario and La Macaza, Quebec
respectively for North American air defense from 1961 to 1972. There were a
total of 56 Bomarcs in Canadian service.
After uncovering this bit of intriguing Canadian aviation history, I decided
that I should add a Canadian Bomarc missile to my collection. The best kit of
the Bomarc, and also one which is somewhat obtainable is the Revell 1M-99 Bomarc
kit. The Revel Bomarc kit was first released in 1957. The scale of the
model has been listed at 1/47 to 1/56, depending on the source of the data. This
is a classic box scale kit! This kit come complete with a nice, but simplified
launch pad. I came across an abandoned Bomarc launch pad behind the Eglin AFB
USAF Armament museum a few years ago, and Revell appears to have done a decent
job in modeling the prototype. This kit was reissued several times over the
years without any modifications. I had several copies of the Revell History
Makers Bomarc kit available (kit No. 8602) so this is what I used.
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I started with the
launch base. Like many kits from the1950s era of models, be prepared to clean up
a lot of flash and areas where the mold was misaligned. In fact, I spent more
time cleaning up parts on this kit than actually building it! I had a lot of
trouble cleaning up the pieces that make up the launch base and I ended up
cutting pieces of Evergreen plastic strips and laminating them to the outside
surface of most of the base grid work. This was to cover up the seams and sink
holes in the hard to putty surfaces. Most pieces had pin marks on the outside
surface, so these needed to be cleaned up. I built the base mostly stock, with
several exceptions. I covered the pump box (part 40) with a lid made out of
sheet styrene and added a wire handle. I substituted a braided wire line for the
connection between the compressor tank (part 41) and the control panel. I
detailed the control panel dials with epoxy lenses. After assembly was complete,
I painted the launch base flat black followed by flat yellow. This allowed me to
get some shadowing in the hard to reach places. This was followed by weathering
with a silver pencil and pastel chalks.
While I was working on painting
the base, I started the Bomarc missile. This was assembled according to the
instructions. As was fashionable at the time, the Bomarc is covered with a major
infestation of rivets and molded in places for the decals. I sanded the beejesus
(southern US term for my friends north off the border!) out of the missile after
I used more than a bit of Milliput to fill the major sink holes. The
two probes on the wing show up metallic silver in the photos of operational
Canadian Bomarcs, so I removed the ones molded on the wing and faired in
replacement probes made from straight pins. This also saved me from spouting
rather colorful language when I would almost definitely snap one or both off
during the build. The two ramjets on the bottom of the Bomarc looked good for
the early ramjets used on the Bomarc, but had a hollow look to them. In other
words, you could look right up the tailpipe and see the nose cone at the other
end. I solved this problem by taking a 1/144 radial engine from a B-29 kit and
sanding the back down until I ended up with a spoke wheel configuration. This
was glued into the narrowest part of the exhaust pipe which duplicated the spoke
internal configuration of the ramjet. The exhaust end was painted using Alclad
Steel with the internal part a darker shade of Alclad. The front section was
finished in ModelMaster gloss white.
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I had to guess a bit on the
overall colors as I could not uncover any specifications for Canadian missiles.
I used ModelMaster white for the nosecone and Canadian Voodoo Gray for the main
body. This Gray looks slightly dark when compared to photos of the real thing,
but I went with a combination of what it could have been and what I had
available that was a close match! I obtained the decals from Tango Papa decals (http://www.tangopapadecals.com/),
a high quality custom decal manufacturer who deals primarily with model rockets
and space related subjects. He had the decals for a Canadian Bomarc listed, but
they were for a larger scale flying rocket. I sent Tango Papa a copy of the
Revell Bomarc kit, and they were able to scale the decals to fit. This is one of
the benefits with using Alps printed decals! For those interested, these decals
are still available even though they do not appear on his web site. Just drop
him a line as the owner is extremely helpful and friendly. The TangoPapa
decals went on very well and looked painted on after I used Microset solution on
them. To duplicate the line between the warhead and main body, I applied a gray
decal strip from an old Scalemaster sheet. After the application of the decals,
I gave the Bomarc an overall coat of PollyS Satin finish.
The only thing left was paint the exhaust area inside the main body rear nozzle
ModelMaster Interior Black, insert the Bomarc onto the launch pad and add the
Canadian flag to the base. Voila! I now have a rather unusual missile kit for my
collection which has an interesting aviation story behind the prototype. Now
where’s my bottle of Molsens to celebrate…………….. eh?
Mike
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