Sunday, June 2

Preview: Italeri's new-tool F-35C in 72nd scale...

Italeri continue to bring the lightning in the form a new-tool 1/72nd scale F-35C available next month. We look at the aircraft, art, profiles & built up test shot in our preview...

Preview: Italeri's new-tool F-35C in 72nd scale...

F-35C Lightning II 
From Italeri
1/72nd scale
Kit# 1469
100% new moulds
Available in the first week of July.
The Subject - Lockheed's F-35C Lightning II
The F-35C is the first and world’s only long-range stealth strike fighter designed and built explicitly for Navy carrier operations. It’s configuration, embedded sensors, internal fuel and weapons capacity, aligned edges, and state of the art manufacturing processes all contribute to the F-35’s unique Very Low Observable stealth performance. This enables pilots to evade enemy detection and operate in anti-access and contested environments, improving lethality and survivability.

F-35C taking off the flight deck of the USS Carl Vinson 
The Active Electronically Scanned Arrays (AESA) radar, Distributed Aperture System (DAS), Electro Optical Targeting System (EOTS) and Helmet Mounted Display System allow the pilot to see everything in the battlespace with unprecedented situational awareness. The F-35 can operate as an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance asset and battle manager, sharing information to all networked ground, sea and air assets in the battlespace. This ensures men and women in uniform can execute their mission and come home safe.

F35C Lightning II aircraft assigned to the “Argonauts”
The F-35C carries nearly 20,000 lbs of internal fuel and has a range of greater than 1,200 nm. The enables F-35C pilots to fly further and remain in a desired battlespace longer before refueling is necessary. The design of the F-35C’s wings and landing gear make it suitable for catapult launches and fly-in arrestments aboard naval aircraft carriers.

The C-variants wingtips fold to allow for more room on the carrier’s deck while deployed.
The F-35C can reach speeds of 1.6 Mach (~1,200 mph) even with a full internal weapons load. With its fuel and internal weapons load, the F-35C can fly faster with no drag associated with external tanks and weapons required for legacy fighters. 

An F-35 C Lightning II lands aboard USS Nimitz. 
The F-35C can carry more than 5,000 lbs of internal weapons, or more than 18,000 lbs of combined internal and external weapons. This allows the Navy to operate in stealth when necessary, or increase lethality with additional weapons externally when the air space is permissive. Naval Air Station Lemoore is home to the Navy’s Joint Strike Fighter Wing. The U.S. Marine Corps is also acquiring F-35C aircraft along with their F-35BSs.

F-35C Lightning II at-sea trials

The Kit: 
Italeri's new-tool 1/72 scale kit of the fifth-generation multi-role fighter F-35C Lightning II is on the way. Italeri have sent some details of the kit's markings and the look of the kit put together in test form.

There are four marking choices for this kit, all from the US Navy & Marine Corps...
The test kit has already been constructed by Italeri's staff, we can see the folding wings, the facetted skin detail and tinted canopy, along with some small diameter guided bombs under the wings in "Beast Mode".
The kit will be available in the first week of July. You can see more about Italeri's kits from their website.