1/32 Tamiya F-15E   "Mil Killer"

by Stephen Cornett

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This is my second attempt at the big bird.  My first Tamiya F-15E was from Mountain Home, in planning for this my second attempt at building this fabulous kit I wanted to find a set of decals that had some historical value.  I came across the Cutting Edge Models set Art full Eagles #3 (CED32045) and in reading through the info for each of the aircraft one struck my eye.   89-0487 "Lucky".  The aircraft was given its name by its crew Capt. Tim Bennett and Capt. Dan Bakke after they scored a kill on the first night of Operation desert Storm by dropping a GBU 10 on an Iraqi Helo.  After doing some research I've found some conflicting info.  Some reports listed the kill as an MI-24 and others an MI-8.  Unfortunately I was unable to find any real solid information on this aircraft and the incident involving the Helo kill. 

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As for the kit model.  This kit is basically out of the box with the exception of the Verlinden seats and the scratch built covers.  As you can see this is the latest release from Tamiya.  So I put the updated weapons to use.   

As for the seats, the seats that come with the kit are fairly nice but I wanted to use resin seats.  I went with the Verlinden Products ACES seats because, in my opinion they are the best.  Granted they're not the easiest to put together but If you can get them together they are exceptional. 

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My original plan was the build the Tamiya kit and the Revell kit at the same time, but the Revell kit turned out to be a bit more time consuming.  I am however still working on the Revell kit and hope to have it finished in the near future. 

Stephen

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Photos and text © by Stephen Cornett