1/72 Italeri A-10A Thunderbolt II

by Michael Schretter

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The A-10 is about the only airplane explicitly designed for CAS - ground support. It comes with this powerful GAU-30 cannon which fires up to 4000 rounds per minute of 30 mm ammunition (explosive oder depleted uranium) and I guess nobody wants to be on the receiving end of this gun.

My little diorama shows an A-10 getting ready for a somewhat different mission.

It's being loaded with 2 GBU-10 2000 lbs laser guided bombs (pylons 3 and 9) together with 4 SUU-30 cluster bombs (pylons 4 to 8). So this will be a bombing mission rather than CAS.
For self defense it's got 2 AIM-9L (pylon 1 with launcher) and the AN/ALQ-131 ECM pod (pylon 11).

The weapons and ground vehicles are Hasegawa. Colors are Gunze acrylics. Future was used for intermediate coatings and the cockpit canopy. Also Eduard PE parts were used (almost a 100 parts really can make life hard - but it's worth the effort). Washing with oil-paint.

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A lot of work also went into cockpit and landing gear which I tried to detail as much as possible...

...and I'm really ashamed for the upside-down AF logo. But living in Austria doesn't make you too sensible on USAF logos

Hope you like my Hog

Mike

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Photos and text © by Michael Schretter