Oh wait, we're not talking about toy cars here. OK, lets try that again..
Years ago, I bought the Hasegawa Tornado F3 with the "Red Zebra" markings. Or so I thought. This kit was from a period when the decal producers for Hasegawa were unable to distinguish between white and tan, so the decals were utterly, totally useless. Not yellowed, mind, but printed in a colour that didn't remotely resemble white. So, nice plastic, no decals.
Somewhere between now and then, I stumbled accross the Matchbox Tornado F3.
The kit cost less than an after market decal sheet, and I rather fancied a non-UK F3, so I bought it for the decals. Good thing too, because the plastic crude. Matchbox was always simplified, but otherwise neatly done, but this kit is neither. So, nice decals, no plastic. Balances the Hasegawa neatly
Now incomplete, the kit languished for years (which is a polite way of saying in just hogged shelf space). Then we had the Dambusters! 617 Sqn GB on this board. When my models were complete, I dragged them off to the local IPMS meeting, and quite naturally, talk went into "what if" territory, wondering how the RAF would go about removing an inconvenient dam on someone else's territory these days. Conclusion was that most likely they'd have to nuke it, as they didn't have anything else capable of knocking down such a structure, and even if they were to build a new bunch of Upkeep bombs, they'd have nothing to deliver something that big with. Until someone mentioned the Tornado could carry about as much unpleasantness to the enemy as a Lancaster. Much hilarity over Tornados with bouncing bombs ensued.
Some pennies slowly started to drop. I had an obsolete Tonka eating up space. I remembered someone in the GB mentioning he was building a Lancaster that included the Upkeep system, but that he hadn't used it. And I remembered playing around with the Upkeep bomb and idly noticing it could fit, if only just, below the fuselage of a Tornado (it depends a bit on whick kit really, sometimes the legs are just long enough, sometimes they're just a bit too short). A plan came into being. The non-dambusting builder (I can't find or remember who it was, to my shame) was kind enough to send me the surplus weapon. And then, sadly, the idea failed to get off the ground due to all those other interesting projects
Still, I tend to hang on to my crazy ideas better than to the sane ones, so neither the kit nor the plan ever went away. and then this GB came along, and suddenly the plan was irresistable. So, WWII markings, and a totally inappropriate payload will be added to this:
