Team Yankee A-10 Total Refurbishment

by Dennis ‘Matt Varnish’ Campbell

AF Reserve A-10 painted not-green. These were how my 2nd hand aircraft looked like.

Those that know me, know that I am a huge plane nerd.    So it might be odd that I did the A-10’s for my Team Yankee Americans last and not first. The reason for this was threefold:  In the previous version of Team Yankee, aircraft were too easily killed by AA fire, even humble vehicle machine guns.

Second, the very high AT weapons weren’t really needed in a game without M1A1s, Challengers and T-80s.  Third, they were the Battlefront resin kits, with the weapons in the wrong spot, painted in a Desert Scheme that wasn’t really used, plus I did not have access to decals even if I did repaint them.

Why repaint them?    It turns out, the A-10’s used in Desert Storm were flown mostly from European bases such as RAF Bentwaters (the WR tail code on the Battlefront decals) or were from the US but were in Europe at the time.  And turns out there was a Reserve Unit that deployed, from Lousiana, which is perfect for my National Guard themed army!

This meant I had to repaint them all to the dark green.   While I was at it, I figured why not also kit-bash the correct* weapons loadouts since I had been flying the A-10 virtually in my flight sim a lot, and knew it would bother me to leave them as-is. Which meant removing the Mavericks from the 4 middle stations and swapping them with the MK-20 Rockeye CBUs (Cluster Bomb Unit)   Since I’m also a masochist, I decided to go more all-out, and kitbash the Sidewinders and the ECM pod.  The finished product is the banner picture, but here is the step-by-step

 

I have 4x MiG-23 kits for my Syrians (since they did not use Su-25’s) and thus have spare AA missiles.    Since the R-13 was a soviet copy of the Sidewinder, they will stand in as Sidewinders. The AA-7 ‘Apex’ long-range missiles will from the basis of the ECM pods.   I have a parked A-10 in my flight sim up on my screen for painting / reference. The first step was painting the correct colours, which after the desert were very faded compared to the standard colours:

I went with VJ Reflective Green 890, VJ Dark Grey 994 over a base of VJ German Camo Dark Green 979.  I wanted to get the colours down before I put on the weapons.

Sidewinders and AA-7 are laid out so I can scratch-build pylons for them. Note I am using 4x Mavericks not 6. Apparently the Mavericks closest to the main wheels would burn/damage them when fired, so it was pretty rare for them to fire all 6.

 

Bottom view of the weapons arrangement and colours. I couldn’t find ANY pictures of the NATO dark colour scheme from underneath so I had to resort to using my flight sim. CBU’s are white, Mavericks are green, which is the opposite of how mine were painted previously…

 

AA-7 missile trimmed down to just a cylinder for the ECM pod, made small pylons for the Mavericks and Sidewinders. Originally I was going to have the Mavericks in the correct configuration, but they hung down too low, so I went with side-by-side since the resin weapons are larger than a plastic kit’s would be.  Not 100% correct, but they would break off every time I stowed them in my figure case otherwise..

 

Completed Sidewinder pylon, plastic strip and thin tubing to detail out the ECM pod

 

 

4 sets, ready for gluing.. I had to finish re-painting the last 2 A-10’s before I could proceed.   Thanks to COVID lockdown, it wasn’t like I had a lot else going on….. so bashed them out in a few hours.

 

Pro-Tip: Don’t glue the CBUs too close to the flight stand hole, otherwise you have to rip them off and start over!

 

Detail view of port-side Mavericks and ECM pod

 

Detail of Sidewinder pylon

 

All four sets of weapons mounted. Now I can finish painting the rest of the model.

 

Using Army Painter Stong Tone, I do all the panel lines.

 

CBU’s in white, Mavericks in VJ Violet Green, ochre for the Maverick seeker heads, yellow for the explosive markers on the weapons.

 

 

 

 

 

Speaking of decals, I ordered the ‘new’ TY USA decal set along with some new tank stowage kits. I was hoping that I could use the helo decals.. but unfortunately, despite looking black on the website, the new decals are dark grey.. so when applied to a dark colour, look light grey, as seen here. At least my new canopies look good.. VJ Panzer Aces Periscope, VJ Field Blue, VJ Luftwaffe blue then a gloss coat.

 

Again since I am a huge nerd, I just HAD to paint the formation lights. Army Painter Kraken Skin.    But what was I going to do for decals now?

 

Scott ‘Obsidian23’ Roach had been experimenting with decal sheets and making his own. I told him I needed Louisiana AF Reserve ones, and found a picture of a 1/48 decal sheet that had the unit I needed. Once scaled down, I could fit 4x sheets on one page.. however, the light blue backing had to be changed to white, for the decal program to register as ‘clear’ in between decals.    A friend of mine, a professional photographer, used his editing magic to quickly change the background blue to white, and the result is below.. Thanks Bob Falcetti!

However, the sheet with the clear backing was only going to work on black/dark decals such as the ‘NO’ ‘AFRES’ lettering, and the serial numbers and stars-and-bars.   I would need a second set for the coloured symbols, where I would need to trim the very edges of each decal.

The finished product.    The decals are a tad on the large side, but I can live with it.   Coloured Tactical shield is the only one I ended up using, the rest were too small to be seen.

‘NO’ 2-letter is for Louisiana Air Force Reserve, ‘AFRES’ on the engines as well.    This unit was the first to score an air-to-air kill with an A-10, shooting down an Iraqi Gazelle during Desert Storm.   Pilot’s day job was a 747 pilot for Delta Airlines..  Not bad for a civvie!  The aircraft that made the kill was dubbed ‘Chopper Popper’ and is gate-guard at the Air Force Academy gate now.

Yes I put serial numbers on the nose.  Yes, I also realize that this is how they are NOW but during Desert Storm era, they were on either side of the nose and not under the refueling port.  I might one day put nose art on each one, so keeping my options open by leaving them as-is.

 

 

 

In the end, I think they turned out great.  They should have, seeing as I’ve spent almost as much time working these 4 models as re-painting the rest of my army combined.. special thanks to Scott and Bob for decal work.    Now, for this COVID Lockdown to end so I can actually use these models!

Next up for my Team Yankee force are those ‘new’ US Stowage packs, but that’ll have to wait for another article….

 

Stay Safe everyone

Inside of A-10C ladder doors can be colourful… great use of Batman meme re: F-35. Found during my ‘research’

 

Matt Varnish, AKA Dennis Campbell, plays Team Yankee, Flames of War, and Black Powder and now Ancients, in the frozen wastes of Canadia. Check out my youtube channel for hundreds of :