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MiG-37 Ferret



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by Erin 'DasPhule' Lantz


Scale: 1/48

The year is 1985. Lockheed has been operating their F-117 for several years now, but the secrets of stealth have yet to be even realised by the USSR, or have they? During the Have Blue test program, a simple airman charged with fueling the prototype plane was snapping away with his micro camera. He even went so far as to steal some of the surface materials from the secret radar absorbing plane's hull. Once he had what he needed, he mysteriously dissappeared. He returned to the USSR and was quickly named a national hero for his service to the people, yet would never be publicly honored as the new Russian stealth program was now top secret.

The radar absorbing material that the US used was totally useless to the Soviets, they couldn't figure out how to replicate it. So, after a year of fiddling with it, they decided to make their own from a sand/fiberglass based material that gave the plane a rough surface texture that also aided in radar reflection and absorption. The powerplant was the typical Tumanski turbojet engines used in other fighters at the time to save on costs, and the landing gear and cockpit were robbed from the MiG-21. The whole package was quite flimsy and very fragile, making it very hard to keep together until done. Eventually each plane's skin would be coated on the inside with epoxies to keep it from shaking itself apart as shattered fighters became more and more common at the MiG secret facility.

The plane was hurredly put into production without so much as a prototype being built. The crude beast was difficult to manouver, uncomfortable with it's crews, and totally inaccurate with it's weapons (a paltry two AA missiles that never worked), but it was invisible to most all radar. The worst problem with the plane was the ungodly ugly paintjob that the scientists painted it in, commonly referred to as "The Pink Death". The pink and grey scheme was officially known as "dead tree camo #2" and was made up of three colors known to be difficult to detect with the unaided eye at night. This model is the 5th plane off the assembly line, named by it's pilot "A Touch Of Pink". The nose art was tolerated by the party as the plane soon got such a reputation for breaking up midflight during high G manuevers and killing pilots that they were given plenty of latitude to do such un-communist things to their rides.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, all of the planes were destroyed to keep the world from knowing of the spy job that had taken place in the US. After all, the new Russians would need as much good will as they could get in the coming years. A spy scandal wouldn't help the cause! Until the plans and photos were released last year (curiously by a simple airman who refueled planes), it's existance was unknown of by few people outside of the inner circle of the Soviet Union.


The model is the Testors/Italeri 1/48th scale MiG-37 Ferret. It's built straight from the box with only the nose art decal from Starship Modeler added. It was painted in Model Master enamels and given a double coat of dullcoat to achieve a rough surface texture that replicates a non-existant Russian stealth material.

Image: Rear view

Image: Underneath

Image: Naughty "nose" art




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This page was last updated 15 May 2003