Rock River 110

On May 18, 1972, operating off the USS Midway (CV-41) as part of Carrier Air Wing Five, the “Chargers” of VF-161 launched a section of two McDonnell Douglas F-4B Phantoms, call signs Rock River 105 and Rock River 110.  Their mission was a MIGCAP near Kep airfield in North Vietnam, in support of an Alpha Strike of a railroad bridge in Haiphong harbor during Operation Linebacker I.  Air interdiction efforts to counter the 1972 North Vietnamese Easter offensive had been highly effective just the week before, and as the two Phantoms climbed out of Yankee Station, expectations were high that they would encounter enemy aircraft.  Both aircraft were armed with a pair of rear mounted, semi-recessed AIM-7 Sparrow missiles and four AIM-9 Sidewinders, two on each inboard wing pylon.  The flight lead was Rock River 110, whose aircrew consisted of pilot LT Henry “Bart” Bartholomay, and his RIO, LT Oran Brown.  Their wingman, Rock River 105, was LT Patrick “Pat” Arwood and his RIO, LT (James) Michael “Taco” Bell.  Flying in a loose combat spread formation, the two plane section headed north, looking for a fight. 

Once on station, Bartholomay caught a glimpse of two shiny MiG-19 “Farmers” at his two o’clock flying low in the opposite direction.  The MiGs appeared to be in trail for landing at Kep, west of their position.  Turning hard right and crossing in front of his wingman, Bart called tally-ho, and accelerated to close with them as Arwood climbed and took overwatch in Rock River 105.  As Bartholomay turned into the trail bandit, the MiGs apparently smelled a rat and broke hard while maintaining their trail formation. As the brutal turning fight was developing downstairs, Arwood performed a series of high yo-yos from his overwatch and acquired a pipper on the lead MiG.  He got off a Fox 2 shot, but the lead bandit was pulling a tremendous hard-g turn and the Sidewinder went ballistic, missing its target.  After the errant missile shot, it was game on. The MiGs quickly split up and a melee ensued.  Arwood stayed with the lead MiG, while Bartholomay broke hard and tried to gain position on the trail bandit. The two Phantoms now had their hands full with two very capable and game enemy pilots.

After a series of lagging turns, Bart’s Phantom was losing energy, and more critically, he had lost sight of his MiG, which had tightened the circle and was now creeping towards his six o’clock for a kill shot. Realizing his predicament, Bart resorted to having his RIO, Oran Brown, call the clock position of  the MiG and announced he was setting up for an overshoot of the pursuing bandit.  At the last second, he momentarily dirtied up with speed brakes and flaps, slammed the Phantom vertical in a high alpha maneuver, while rolling outside 180 degrees to maintain a visual on the overshoot.  As expected, the MiG overshot beneath them, but quickly pulled up and began climbing with the Phantom; its energy carrying it slightly above Rock River 110.  Bartholomay was now in a tight spot:  a low energy, vertical climb, practically canopy to canopy with an enemy fighter.  His energy all but dissipated, he unloaded, swapped ends and accelerated downhill.  In a moment of extreme good fortune for the Rock River 110 crew, the MiG broke just before them.  Bart now found himself flying in a rear slot formation with the MiG, heading downhill at forty-five degrees, slightly beneath and within a few hundred feet of its tailpipe.  He throttled back; trying to get some distance between himself and the MiG, as he was much too close for a missile shot (the F-4B was designed in an era when supersonic interceptors carried no guns or cannons).  

Meanwhile, Arwood had lost sight of his MiG.  Kep airfield loomed dangerously close, and Arwood knew he had better regain visual contact, and very soon.  Seconds later, he spotted it at his eight o’clock low, wing rolling apparently in an effort to get a visual on Arwood’s Phantom.  As Arwood maneuvered to get behind the MiG, it broke again into a high-g left turn.  At that moment, Bartholomay chased his MiG right through Arwood’s fight, passing on the oblique starboard in the opposite direction. Seeing this, Arwood’s MiG immediately reversed direction and turned into Bartholomay in a valiant, but tactically fatal, effort to get Bart's Phantom off his wingman’s tail.  Arwood simply came around right, fell into position behind his enemy and launched a Sidewinder, which disintegrated the MiG’s aft fuselage moments after the missile detonated.  Seconds later, Bartholomay, having extended well enough behind his MiG for a clean Fox 2 shot, pulled the trigger on the Sidewinder.  The heat-seeker scorched its way to its target and worked as advertised.  The crew of Rock River 110 watched as their adversary pitched up in flames and flat-spiraled into the ground.  It was time to go home. 

Soaked with sweat from two hard-earned victories, the Rock Rivers pointed their Phantoms east towards the Gulf of Tonkin, tanked, and trapped aboard the Midway at Yankee Station.  Fortunately, despite their close proximity to Kep airfield, not one SAM or AAA salvo was fired at them that day. This southeast Asia deployment (their sixth), saw the Chargers of VF-161 fly 2322 sorties, destroying five enemy aircraft while flying the line for 205 days before their transition cruise almost a year later.  

THE MODEL:  Recently a friend mine, noted naval aviation artist Bob Fiacco, contacted me about a commission to build an F-4B as the primary subject for his next painting.  To be honest; I don’t particularly like commission work when it comes to model building. What normally is a labor of love soon becomes burdened with deadlines (whether real or self-imposed) and the subject matter is often something I wouldn’t otherwise pursue.  But Bob’s story intrigued me:  He had been commissioned by none other than Henry “Bart” Bartholomay, the pilot of Rock River 110, to do an oil painting depicting the dogfight mentioned above, specifically the moment that Bart broke from his high alpha climb and found himself in the slot with the MiG-19, just before Bart fired the Fox 2 that ended the engagement.  This dramatic history, coupled with Bob’s passion to get this on canvas accurately, convinced me.  I would have to put away my World War II kits and paints for awhile and concentrate on depicting the venerable McDonnell-Douglas F-4B Phantom of the famed Chargers of VF-161.    

There were many things to consider when doing this build:  it was to be a static display for an oil painting and did not require much of the details that I normally put into a model.  Bob is an excellent draftsman, yet paints in a very painterly style.  He indicated to me that his main priorities were accuracy of form, paint scheme, primary markings, and ordnance/stores.  His concern, like most artists, is how light and shadow would play on the subject.  I knew that fine details of the real aircraft such as the hundreds of tiny stencils and placards were not necessary (thank God!) due to Bob’s painterly style.  Cockpit details below the canopy sill were also not required.  With these two time-savers came two challenges that I have very little experience with:  A gear-up build with under-wing stores, and inserting two pilot figures in the cockpit under a permanently closed canopy.

For the kit, I chose Academy’s newly-tooled 1:48 scale F-4B “VF-111 Sundowners” for one very simple reason: the highest quality decals depicting Rock River 110 are made by Furball Graphics, and they based their design on the new Academy kit.  Normally, this is not the way I choose a kit, but I got lucky.  With the new tooling, Academy pulled out all the stops on this one.  Fine recessed details, extra parts for different versions, three different colors of molded styrene (gray, white, and metallic black). It also contained two pilot figures, which was a necessity for this build. It is a first rate kit, with all the bells and whistles. That’s not to say it is an easy build… because it’s not.  It takes a lot of planning, chin scratching and dry fitting to ensure everything lines up like it should…. but trust me, everything does. (A special shout-out here to Furball graphics:  The name sounds funny, but their decals are all business.  Printed by the industry standard Cartograph, these are some of the finest designed, perfectly registered decals I have ever used).

The build started with the cockpit, which went together with no problems whatsoever.  At this time, I also dipped the canopy pieces in Future and set them aside to dry for a few days.  Due to the lack of required cockpit detail, I chose to not paint the gray styrene.  Academy provided black molded instrument panel and console panels, so those areas were left alone as well.  I did paint the Martin Baker H-7 ejection seat and mixed a custom recipe of olive drab, gray and white to approximate the color of US aircrew flight suits and painted the two pilot figures.  I left the helmets white, based on a flawed assumption that all Vietnam era Navy aircrews had standard white helmets and reflective tape.  Boy was I wrong.  Note: After the model was completed, I came across a picture of two Charger aviators sitting in the cockpit of an F-4B.  Their helmets were clearly displayed and, wouldn’t you know it, they were BLACK with red lightning bolts.  Not white like I had assumed.  Unfortunately, since this was a commission for a particular aircraft; I did not research the flight equipment of the aircrew.  I should have, but I didn’t. Compounding this error is the fact that the pilot figures (which I never include in my models) were painted, inserted into the cockpit, and closed up permanently under the canopy, making any corrective action impossible.  

Since this was a gear up build, I skipped Step 2 of Academy’s instructions (assembly of the landing gear and wells) and joined the lower forward fuselage with the bottom lower wing section.  The two sections actually slide and click together, again, with perfect alignment.  Next, I used my pin vise to drill out the tiny sinkholes that marked the location of the pylons and drop tank’s mounting pins.  I then glued the speed brakes and gear doors in the closed position before mating the upper and lower wings.  Believe it or not, this was the most technically challenging part of the entire build.   It was painstaking work, as there were eleven separate pieces that had to be mounted with virtually no support structures or locator pins.  By using blue painter's tape to hold the doors in place, I ran a careful bead of extra thin super glue along the joints from the inside.  Realizing I could really foul up a pristine under-wing and fuselage with excess super glue and ill fitting doors, I was very relieved when I pulled the tape off.  It had worked, and the doors remained affixed in their proper closed position. 

It was now time to join the upper and lower wings.  After some dry fitting, I noticed the wing thickness at mid chord was lacking, and the wing was itself was spongy when squeezed from the top and bottom.   I should’ve known better… the wing had no internal bracing support because I skipped assembling and inserting the gear wells.  So I went back to Step 2, assembled the gear well boxes and positioned them on the interior face of the lower wing and sandwiched the wing halves together.  It made all the difference.  The wings were now firm with a perfectly shaped chord and span.  I then assembled the engine intakes, airbrushed the exhaust nozzles with Alclad II metal lacquers and glued them in place. Academy does a pretty neat job with the intake tubes and their corresponding exhausts.  The intakes are capped inside with a faux inlet compressor turbine section of an engine that does not exist.  Likewise, each exhaust nozzle is capped deep inside with the aft stage of a notional General Electric J-79 turbojet.  The illusion is perfect in that makes sense and looks great.  All this was clamped and set aside to dry.

Next, the entire top of the aircraft, from the radome aft, snapped into position so perfectly (the wing joint was flawless) on the lower half, that I was tempted to not apply any glue.  Needless to say, my appreciation of this kit was escalating.  After assembling and joining the radome, inlet sections, ailerons and cockpit details, I had to take a break from construction and broke out the airbrush again.  The dirty end of an F-4 Phantom is a very unique and visually appealing design.  Because it’s hot exhaust gases were expelled underneath, but forward, of the tail feathers, this entire area was treated with bare metal panels.  Academy molded this section as one piece, with a small cap on top and at the very end.  After researching photos of the actual aircraft, I used a system of masking and spraying slightly different shades of Alclad II dark aluminum, magnesium, pale burnt metal, and jet exhaust to capture the nuances of the different panels.  When this was done, I wanted to try something that would give it a touch more realism:  To simulate the shockwave burn pattern on the metal, I laid a men’s pocket comb lengthwise over the piece and sprayed a light coat of burnt metal lacquer over the comb’s teeth.  The effect was subtle, but effective. 

I decided not to attach this empennage section at this stage of the game, until final base painting was done.  I had two reasons for this:  One, the empennage was engineered to fit perfectly within the panel lines of the actual aircraft and I didn’t want to ruin a good paint job by having to mask around it; and two, I didn’t want to have to flip the model over and risk snapping off tail surfaces during the painting process.  Dry fitting was a must though, and I was very satisfied with the results.

Next up was attaching the wingtip dihedrals.  The F-4’s design engineers realized through wind tunnel testing that the wing needed five degrees of mean dihedral to counteract stability problems.  Rather than redesign the entire wing, they added twelve degrees to the wingtips which gave them the net five degrees that was required.  This detail is a weak spot in the Academy kit.  It calls for a narrow shim-like strip of plastic to be inserted into the exposed outer wing joint, and then gluing the wingtip to the shim.  It’s a rather weak and sloppy joint in an area that begs for strength.  If I had to do it over again, I would’ve glued the wingtips directly to the wing, as Academy got the dihedral angle perfect on the mating edges of the joint.  Because of this weakness, I needed a template or jig that would hold the wingtips at exactly twelve degrees after they were glued and positioned.  A friend of mine bent two small strips of thin sheet aluminum on a sheet metal break and measured them at twelve degrees on a machinist’s protractor. 

I simply set theses templates into place on the outboard wings and, using blue painters tape, wrapped them tightly to the wing so that they were immobile.  Next, I applied glue to the wingtip joints, positioned them on top of the templates, snugged them down into the joint and clamped them with paper clips.  When the glue had set, I removed the templates and had a strong, twelve degree dihedral.

It was now time to paint.  I had two bottles of Polly Scale “US Lt Gray” (FS16440) acrylic paint, several bottles of black and white and some insignia red, the base colors I would need to finish the paintjob.  The scheme of VF-161’s F-4Bs is not overly difficult to paint, but is very mask intensive and required some thought on how to go about it.  After wiping down the model with Windex and a soft rag, I decided to mask and glue the canopy and windscreen in place, shoot a freehand coat of black around the upper radome, canopy (to simulate the interior framing), and the sides of the turtle deck.  While I had the black paint loaded, I applied a good coat to the vertical tail and finished up with pre-shading the entire model along its many panel lines. 

Next, I sprayed the tops of the intakes with US medium gray. The black horizontal stripe with “USS Midway” running along the sides of the turtle deck was exactly the scale width of Tamiya’s ¼ inch masking tape.  One strip of tape on either side of the turtleback would mask this stripe perfectly.  I applied the rest of the tape masks over the black areas, masked the walkways over the medium gray, and sprayed the entire upper half of the aircraft with US Light Gray.  I then painted the underside and horizontal tail surfaces with Insignia white. When I removed the masks and dry fitted the empennage, I was very satisfied with the results.  I left the canopy mask in place, as I still had gloss coating and decals to contend with. 

I set the model aside for a few days and concentrated on building and painting the load-out ordnance that Rock River 110 was armed with on May 18^th, 1972.  I glued the fins onto the missiles, dipped them in Future and let them dry.  I then painted the business end with the appropriate color (gray for the Sparrows and dark titanium for the Sidewinders), applied the markings (color coded bands denoting status of the rocket motors and warheads) and mounted them to their appropriate pylon station. 

The drop tank was molded in two pieces, and light sanding was required to hide the joint seam.  I painted it with a coat of insignia white with and then carefully masked the forward tip and painted it insignia red.  Afterwards, sections were masked and dusted with an ultra thin mix of black, and weathering was done with a fine paintbrush to simulate fuel and grime smudges.  A final dusting of insignia white over the weathering literally sealed the deal.

Now it was time to slap on all the “pointy pieces”, the ones that are at a high risk of damage during a build.  Because it had no gear to rest on, I had bought an acrylic three-point display stand from Flight Pose, so I could work on either side of the model without damaging the opposite side.   In quick order, I joined the empennage structures, flipped the model over and carefully attached the pylons and drop tank in their pre drilled mounting holes.  Everything fit perfectly and the paint job, with all the prior masking, finally made visual sense.

After applying several coats of Future over the entire model and letting it dry a few days, I began the decal process.  As I stated earlier, Furball Graphics decals are without equal in my opinion.  A touch on the expensive side… but they are worth every penny.  Their “Bravo MiG Killers” (48-011) set comes with two full size sheets of every F-4B marking imaginable. It also includes full color illustrations with small write-ups of the individual aircraft, stores loading data, and FS paint schemes.  Needless to say, they went on without a hitch.   I applied a drop or two of MicroSet on each decal and put the model away for another day.  Next was another thin coat of Future which was followed by slopping on a very thin tincture of Payne’s Gray artist oils over the panel lines.  Using a combination of an old tee shirt and flat watercolor brush slightly dampened with Turpenoid, I rubbed the paint off in the direction of airflow across the model’s surfaces.  That was it for the weathering… this model was going to be the subject of an artist’s interpretation, and I did not want to overdo the weathering effects.   Finally, a coat of Polly Scale flat acrylic, attachment of the tiny antennas and pitot tubes, and removal of the canopy mask... and I was done.  I boxed it in a custom carrying case and delivered it to the artist, Mr. Robert Fiacco.  I think he was pleased.  His finished painting, "Rock River Advantage" was awarded first prize at the 2014 San Diego Air & Space Museum ASAA International Exhibit.

I owe a special thanks to several friends and colleagues who helped me with the research of this build: CAPT Ron "Weasel" Weisbrook (USN, Ret) for his assistance in my research of the McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantom.  CDR Dan "Argo" Redgate (USN, Ret), a former TOPGUN graduate, who schooled this retired Army aviator in the lingo and basics of naval air combat maneuvers.  And to my good friend John Myers, an extraordinary artist, custom aircraft and automobile fabricator, who formed the two 12-degree sheet aluminum templates mentioned above. Without their help, this project would not have turned out as well as it did.  

(Author's note:  Henry "Bart" Bartholomay, the pilot of Rock River 110, passed away on October 5, 2015.  This page is dedicated to his memory and service).