The Bloody Screw (Area 88)

The finished model:

The scene:

There’s a new player on the battlefields of North Africa! When the anti-government forces hire their own band of mercenaries, known as “the Wolfpack”, the pilots of Area 88 face their toughest challenge yet – taking on a team as skilled as their own.

After a pre-emptive first strike on the base destroys most of the planes, Area 88 is down to 10 Kfirs on loan from the government. To make matters worse, The Wolfpack decides to pull out all the stops and use one of their most advanced techniques – the “Bloody Screw, a high-G maneuver designed to literally squeeze the blood out their victim.

Check out the original manga scene from Chapter 012 “The Wolves of the Air” here:

The story:

Oh, man… those advanced techniques are… advanced!

Ok, so I might be a bit more incredulous about the benefits of combat technique that uses such an indirect, not to mention messy, method of killing an enemy combatant. Why not just shoot them? Well, comics and manga are built on the suspension of disbelief… so in the end, if it’s cool… who really cares, right?

Practical or not, the scene of three MiG-27s screaming down upon our heroes (in their rented rides) stuck with me over the years and made it yet another of the iconic moments I wanted to capture in my 1/144 Area 88 “action sequence” builds.

The kits:

Mig-23 Flogger (by Mini Hobby Models)
MIG-23 Flogger (by Academy)

The build:

Of course, it also didn’t hurt that I could get my hands on 1/144 MiG-23 kits on the cheap. Being able to easily grab 3… or 6 boxes of Academy’s reboxing of the Hobbycraft MiG-23 off the shelf really made it an easy decision to include in my project rotation.

So easy, in fact, that I originally put this project together as part of a 1-week build on Whatifmodellers.com. It turned out all right, but given the short timeline, there were a few things that I ended up with that I wasn’t all that happy with, including the camouflage pattern and the tail marking decals. But far and away the part that bugged me the most, were the noses.

Like a lot of kits, Academy’s MiG-23 is engineered in such a way that just a couple of different parts is all that separates it from being built as a MiG-27. However, despite my best (quick) efforts to reshape the nose – it just didn’t work.

It took me a while to figure out that the problem wasn’t just the shape, but also the length. It’s just too short. Luckily Trumpeter also has a very cheap MiG-23 offering available under the guise of a Mini Hobby Models boxing. In my opinion, the kit itself is not good for much, the details are so soft as to be almost non-existent and the fit is suspect at best. It does, however feature a cockpit nose shape that’s at least consistent with the MiG-23BN… a close cousin of the MiG-27. So I decided to declare a do-over and make a better, more concentrated, effort on this build project.

The main assembly went smoothly enough. There are very few parts and I’d already practiced three times. But the kitbashing needed to marry the Trumpeter nose to the Academy body took a bit of work. Mostly lots of careful sanding and puttying, but nothing out of this world. I also had to build a cockpit out of nothing, but again, nothing too fancy. There was a bit of a challenge with the subsequent fit of the clear canopy – the fit wasn’t great before and my reshaping/sizing only made it more challenging.

Although I think I was successful at correcting the camouflage the second time around, I still had some problems with the tail markings. At first I used clear decals, it they were lost against the dark background paint. So I tried white-backed decals with colour “matching” backgrounds… but the less said about that the better. Finally I decided to get out the knife and cut myself a stencil. It took a while to refine the technique, and I changed from using tape to using paper, but I finally got something I could work with. It wasn’t a perfect solution as the paper got damp from the paint and lifted off the plastic, giving a bit of a fade effect and a few spots where the paint seeped through, but with less than 5mm of space to work with, I can’t really complain.

The last step was to wire up a trio of orange LED lights for the afterburners, because… why not? Then I added the whole thing to a wooden base (also known as an upside down coaster) and finished it off with a decal based on the scene from the manga.

As my first 1/144 Area 88 “mini diorama”, I’m pretty happy with the result. Feel free to let me know what you think!

I declare a do-over! I think I can do a better job this time…

Glueing the main fuselage together was a snap… had a lot of practice.

Ahh… the secret weapon has arrived. The box looks all right.

But the sprues aren’t much too look at… but I’m really only after two pieces

But first, I added a little bit of detail to the airbrakes.

Now I know what a plane made out of bubble gum looks like… ugh. But at least the nose piece is more or less the correct shape.

A semi-dry fit. A bit out of whack, but I think I can manage it…

Now THAT is starting to look like a MiG-27! We’ll have to wait for the putty to dry though.

Glued the rest of the fins on. More or less finished the shaping. Now just the fine tuning.

After lots of sanding, I put down paint to check the progress. Still a bit more to do.

Time to start filling in the cockpit. Looks like more putty.

Also, flip them over and start covering the wheel wells. Trying to be as precise as possible.

Getting them just right will take some shaving, more putty and more sanding, but I want them to look right… so back to work!

Time to get started on some work on the cockpit details…

A few more details added to the cockpit.

Looking at it now, I think more than just the shape, it was the length of the nose that bugged me. The first attempt was just way too short!

Canopies dipped in Future… hard to see in the pic, but the middle one has two big scratches… what to do?

A bit more sanding to tie it all together, but cockpits done for all three planes.

Painted the cockpit… some kind of green. Kinda soviet-style if you squint… and are colour-blind.

Canopies masked, but I’m not quite sure what to do about those gaps.

Ok, first off, some preshading… a bit heavy, but there’ll be multiple layers of paint.

Underside painted grey. I probably should’ve gone for a lighter shade, but oh, well…

Grey underside masked and a coat of desert yellow applied to the top side.

Now for the camouflage masking. Hopefully a little better this time.

Brown camouflage painted. Yep… looks better. It’s darker than before so there’s more contrast.

This wasn’t really part of the original plan, but since I have lots of orange LEDs… why not?

Not a lot of space to work with, but I seem to have got it wired correctly. It’s plugged in with a USB cable, and nothing blew up. I call that a win.

Homemade decals on and dry fit on the base.

I wasn’t happy with the clear decals, so I tried to print ones with a white backing… urm… no.

So back to plan… F? It took 3 blades and 6 tries, but I finally cut out a stencil I could live with. It’s reinforced with itty bitty bits of tape.

Then I applied the stencil to the tail and painted on the yellow. The stencil was very fragile and the paint was making it fall apart, so I had to work quickly to get all 6 sides painted.

Not perfect, but I’m calling it done. The stencil wouldn’t sit quite right, so there’s a bit of a fade around the edges and some yellow paint seeped through in a couple of places, but it’s the best I could do.

Wiring up the base was a bit tricky, I managed to snap one of the support posts. Luckily after a bit of digging I was able to get the broken bit out and re-glue the remainder in place.

3 Replies to “The Bloody Screw (Area 88)”

holycrudsomeoneremembersthis says:

July 27, 2023 at 8:23 AM

Got a real point there WRT the Screw’s, er, inefficiency. On top of the whole ‘head-on supersonic pass’ risk factor, these jokers were throwing half their sub-formation at one guy. Plus…I truly dunno about the Wolfpack cleaning up as much as they do initially with this particular bird. The same engine & sensor package tweaks that made the MiG-27 a decent fast attack platform involved moderate tradeoffs WRT top speed and total removal of the MiG-23’s air-to-air radar; while Kfir variants were also more attack birds than dedicated fighters in actual use, I get the impression they handled much better at knife range than any Flogger flavor not sticking with hit-and-run. Maybe if the Wolves were split between Flogger-Ds for airfield busting & a couple MiG-29s on top cover…

Anyhow: phenomenal decal application & lighting for this scale.

strobez says:

July 28, 2023 at 1:40 AM

Thanks HC! The Bloody Screw is by all accounts… useless. 🙂

While Shintani is generally accurate in his fighter depictions, he takes a ton of liberties with the facts. So, with this scene, that takes place so early in the manga, I think he mainly wanted two things – A) To show the Area 88 mercenaries facing a threat on par with their own tactics/skills… and B) an excuse to draw a cool-looking Eastern-bloc aircraft. The MiG-27 have a real “wolfpack” feel about them, so I think that’s really as far as it went. It’s all drama, little reality… but I’m not complaining. Thanks for the comments!

1. holycrudsomeoneremembersthis says:
  
  July 28, 2023 at 3:38 AM
  
  Suppose I do have to give Shintani props for the sheer visual creativity of a Kfir/Flogger-D clash. Handling & sensor details aside those are damn distinctive airframes.