Hobby Master 1/72 HA3353 Northrop F-5F Tiger II BuNo 840456, VFA-127 Desert Bogeys, Fallon NAS, Nevada
The Northrop F-5 tactical fighter was designed as an extremely maneuverable, supersonic fighter with a high rate of reliability at a low operating cost. The F-5 first flew on July 30, 1959 with the first customer delivery in 1964. The last of more than 2,600 F-5’s was produced in 1989 and about two-thirds of these are still in service with 26 countries more than 4 decades later. The F-5 was manufactured by Northrop Grumman and under license in Canada, Taiwan, South Korea, Spain and Switzerland.
Established as VA-127 “Batmen” they were re-designated VFA-127 “Desert Bogeys” in March 1987 and moved to NAS Fallon, Nevada. Strike Fighter Squadron VA-127 was the only USN adversary squadron permanently stationed in Nevada and was responsible for training pilots in air-to-air combat. In its role as an aggressor aircraft the F-5E often served as a MIG 21 or MIG 23 in combat simulations. VFA-127 was disestablished on March 23, 1996. In October 1996 84-0456 was transferred to VFC-13 as AF 30 before transferring to VFC-111 “Sundowners” on February 27, 2007 as AF 30. On May 13, 2007 the aircraft was changed to AF 100 still with VFC-111.