1/72 ESCI Air America UH-1D

Gallery Article by Let_models on Apr 30 2011

    Saigon fell, ending the Vietnam Conflict in Southeast Asia  April 30  1975 

 

The Air America involvement in the Viet Nam war also exptended into Laos; they flew many clandestine missions for the CIA. In the last day of the war, it was those UH-1D/H that carried out most of Air America's evacuation work from 13 designated points in Saigon to U.S. Embassy rooftop, in downtown Saigon and to the Defense Attache' Office at Tan Son Nhut air base and then to the 7th US fleet waiting on the coast of South Viet Nam. It also remember one of the famous picture showing a helicopter on top of a building for picking up people trying to escape from the North Viet Nam.

The kit is an ESCI 1/72 scale UH-1D, it's a very easy kit to build, fit well, I added some of the extra stuff to the model, made it look more realistic: top air vents around the engine exhaust, re-do the instrument panel, some extra antenna on the roof top, seat belt include the cargo seats, also I scratched 2 wood boxes for the cargo load and a AK-47 rifle. 

I used Tamiya flat aluminum, mixing up blue + sea blue color, decal used were from a Migrand sheet. 

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Note: this helicopter possible made an air-to-air kill of a fix wing aircraft by a AK-47 rifle at Laos in 1967. 

It took me approx. 2 months to complete, some disasters happen during the builds but I try to recover from it and finally I did it for my Viet Nam war collection.

Let_models

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Photos and text © by Let_models