1/72 Hasegawa S-3A Viking

Gallery Article by Burt Gustafson on Aug 13 2012

 

 

For your viewing pleasure, here are some photos of my 1/72 scale Hasegawa S-3A Viking. The Lockheed S-3A Viking is a four-seat twin-engine jet aircraft used by the U.S. Navy to identify, track, and destroy enemy submarines. The Viking replaced the Gruman S-2 tracker and became the first carrier-born jet anti-submarine patrol aircraft in the world.

S-3A Vikings were loaded with submarine search instruments, such as: a powerful APS-116 radar, a forward looking infra-red scanner, a magnetic anomaly detection (MAD) device, an ECM device, and an active sonar system. Additionally, S-3As could carry a variety of offensive weapons, such as: four homing torpedoes and many kinds of bombs and rocket pods on it’s under wing weapon stations.

The first S-3 prototype flew in January 1972 and entered service in 1974. During the production run from 1974 to 1978, a total of 186 S-3As were built. By 1975, a majority of the surviving S-3As were upgraded to the S-3B variant. The S-3 was retired from front-line fleet service aboard aircraft carriers in January 2009, with its missions being assumed by other platforms.

 

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Construction
The 1/72 scale Hasegawa S-3A Viking kit is a superb kit to build. Even with raised panel lines, the external detail is very good, and the parts fit is excellent. Only one area of the build required serious filling and sanding and that was the under wing roots.

Painting
All paints used for this model were Model Masters and Floquil enamel paints. The kit provides two paint and decal schemes; a low visibility version, and the traditional aircraft carrier scheme. The model here is painted in the basic carrier aircraft color scheme used by the US Navy from 1951 thru the late 1980s: Gloss Gull Gray upper surfaces and Gloss White for the underside of the aircraft and control surfaces (flaps, stabilators, and rudder). Floquil Weathered Black for the nose and glare shield. 

Decals
The decals for this kit were flawless. They are well printed, easily placed on the model and snugged down nicely. The kit offers decals for two aircraft. I chose to go with the decals for a VS-28 Gamblers S-3A. Note that for a 1/72 scale model there were a lot of decals and stencils.

Comments
This kit was a pleasure to build. As previously mentioned, the parts fit was excellent. Even with raised panel lines, the external detail is also quite good, and the decals were super. The overall quality of this kit is excellent. I was pleased with the finished model—a colorful model.

Burt Gustafson

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Photos and text © by Burt Gustafson