Cessna A-37B Dragonfly 1/72 Academy

    The Cessna A-37 Dragonfly was developed from a trainer version of the T-37 Tweet. Since 1967, trials and testing have been conducted on the Vietnam battlefield. The A-37 becomed one of the most effective light attack aircraft designed for various air support missions. A basic training version operated in the USAF until 2009 when it was replaced by the T-6 Texan II turboprop. The Dragonfly was also well-liked by ground personnel due to its easy maintenance.

    The Academy A-37 B Dragonfly kit is a kick-off for the planned collection of US Air Force types participating in the Vietnam war.
I had little knowledge about fighter planes from the Vietnam War era and about the conflict itself as well. The one exception is Revell old F-111, one of the first sprayed kits. Back in the early days it was a combination of refrigerator compressor, Aerograph and synthetic Agama colours.

All was changed with the introduction of the MMP book U.S. Air Force in Vietnam, which I read with big interest and started “planning” the builds in the manner we are all probably familiar with. Gradually the stash began to grow with appropriate boxes. Unfortunately, as I found out, the offer of available 1/72 scale kits is not big and many of them could be released as new tool. A good example is the Academy A-37B Dragonfly. While the kit is nice and easy to build, it also has a big potential for various improvements. As I prefer to build models straight out of the box without much ambition, I only added seat belts, an imitation of first stage compressor into the intakes and antennas to the tail. Unfortunately there is also not big offer of available aftermarket decals for Vietnamese theatre. So I used original Korean plank decals out of the box, which depicts the A-37B markings from the 8th Special Operations Squadron at Bien Hoa in 1970. The colors are traditionaly mixed acrylic Tamiya.

    I’m very happy with the kit and am already looking forward to more Vietnamese subjects like the F-5C or F-104. I plan also to build some of the “opponents ” like Mig-21 PF or Mig-17 nicely build by Ujik here on this blog. Well I have an endless stash to build 🙂

Notice: The original text in Czech language was translated with help of automatic translator with minimal corrections. Please do not hesitate to ask for clarification of some wording.