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Friday, July 16, 2010

Sabre Dog






Here are some images of Revell's 1/48 scale North American F-86 D Sabre Dog. From Wikipedia "The North American Aviation F-86D Sabre (sometimes called the "Sabre Dog" or "Dog Sabre") was a transonic jet all-weather interceptor. Based on North American's F-86 Sabre day fighter, the F-86D had only 25 percent commonality with other Sabre variants, with a larger fuselage, larger afterburning engine, and a distinctive nose radome.

The YF-95 was a development of the F-86 Sabre, the first aircraft designed around the new 2.75 in (70 mm) Mighty Mouse FFAR (Fin-Folding Aerial Rocket). Begun in March 1949, the unarmed prototype, 50-577, first flew on 22 December 1949 piloted by North American test pilot George Welch and was the first U.S. Air Force night-fighter design with only a single crewman and a single engine, a J47-GE-17 with afterburner rated at 5,425 lbf (24 kN) static thrust. Gun armament was eliminated in favor of a retractable under-fuselage tray carrying 24 unguided Mk. 4 rockets, then considered a more effective weapon against enemy bombers than a barrage of cannon fire. A second prototype, 50-578, was also built, but the YF-95 nomenclature was short-lived as the design was subsequently redesignated YF-86D.

The fuselage was wider and the airframe length increased to 40 ft 4 in, with clamshell canopy, enlarged tail surfaces, and AN/APG-36 all-weather radar fitted in a radome in the nose, above the intake. Later models of the F-86D received an uprated J-47-GE-33 engine rated at 5,550 lbf/25 kN (from the F-86D-45 production blocks onward). A total of 2,504 D-models were built.


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