Yeah, unless the snail has raw digital assets or physical objects like these (it doesn’t), it’s unlikely to happen soon with any amount of accuracy:
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For reference:
(photo credit: AFMNZ)
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What do you know about the F-16’s that were supposed to be leased by the NZ government? Also was the A-4K still carrier capable?
K was 100% not carrier capable, someone showed me a while back that the K had the Catapult equipment removed.
It still had the Arrestor hook, but had nothing to attach to the Catapults iirc
Gotcha
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@lxtav is correct. The Skyhawks in RNZAF service had the bridle hooks inside the main gear wells removed, which prevents the aircraft from being hooked up to a catapult.
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As for the F-16s, they were nominally standard F-16A/B Block 15 OCU, with the serials NZ6521-NZ6533 (F-16A) and NZ6541-NZ6555 (F-16B) reserved. All individual aiframes included with the lease-buy deal had their own NZ serial by the time the deal was cancelled (NZ6521 was allocated to F-16A 90-0942, for example).
IIRC at the time of the cancellation, the aircraft were maybe 12 months away from delivery at most, and hadn’t been repainted in RNZAF markings.
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Very nice. It’s just that some website had some conflicting information calling them “F-16AM-15 OCU” which didn’t make sense since the AM designation was for the MLU version.
Yes it was only for landing on airfields - Ohakea had fixed arrestor gear IIRC, Woodbourne had portable gear
Delivery of the originals in 1970 - they were delivered by ship and then towed to Whenuapai…
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I wish it was added. I would love to fly me an RNZAF F-16 but gaijin says no :(
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Yeah, it’s just the OCU.
Skyhawks: the history of the RNZAF Skyhawk has a chapter on it that details the F-16 deal.
All 13 F-16A and nine of the F-16B were intended to be flown, with the remaining six F-16B being broken up on delivery and used as parts donor airframes. Delivery was expected to begin in early 2001, with an entry into service of March 2001 for the first aircraft, with the last ones arriving in 2002.
It was a 10-year (5+5) lease deal, with an option at the end to outright purchase the aircraft for a further 140 million USD. A mid-life upgrade was also offered for the five-year mark.
As part of this, the RNZAF also started looking for potential buyers for the Skyhawk fleet, with the Philipine Air Force expressing an interest. At the same time, as a direct consequence, several Skyhawk projects were cancelled by the RNZAF, including a proposal dubbed “KAHU II”, ejection seat replacements, and a structural life assessment programme (Skyhawk Loads Environment Spectrum Survey, or SLESS). These were then briefly restarted folloing the collapse of the F-16 deal, only to be stopped for good with the retirement of the A-4.
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Could carry AIM-120s as-well Theoretically
Theoretically but I think the APG-66 had the AIM-120 related stuff removed. Besides the aircraft never had the rails needed for AIM-120 and New Zealand never had AIM-120
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AIM-9G was the missile on the A-4K when it was introduced?
+1 definitely would like to see it
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That ‘theoreticaly’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting. For a start, AIM-120s arent aupported by either the NAS or the MDGT. And that’s without going into the hardware - such as launchers - that would likely need to be made specifically for the A-4 in order to mount AIM-120s.
When the original (read: factory spec) A-4K arrived in 1970? Technically.
The A-4Ks arrived with AIM-9D/G/H capability (on stations 1 and 5) in 1970. But the AIM-9Gs didn’t arrive until several years later (~1975 if I recall what I read correctly).
But by the time you get to the KAHU airframes rolling out in mid 1988, the first 9Ls had been delivered. And by the time the aircraft were cleared for active service months later, the 9G was long gone.
So in summary:
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Original 1970 A-4K - introduced with AIM-9G, only ever used AIM-9G
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Project KAHU A-4K - introduced with AIM-9L, only ever used AIM-9L
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Thanks. So it’d be unguided bombs and AIM-9Gs, and I’m guessing CRV7 rocket pods on the original A-4K overall? I’m considering adding it in a tech tree I’m working on.
Depends entirely on the year you’re going for.
Prior to 1983 or thereabouts, there were no CRV7s. Instead, as delivered, the A-4K could carry:
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AIM-9G (up to 2)
Mk 81 (up to 20)
Mk 82 (up to 14)
Mk 83 (up to 3)
Mighty Mouse (up 9 19 shot pods)
Zuni (up to 9 4 shot pods)
If you’re going for a configuration in the mid 1980s but prior to Project KAHU, it would look much the same, but with the Mighty Mouse and Zuni replaced by the CRV7.
You also have what I’ll call the A-4G(K), being the ex-RAN A-4G aircraft modified to A-4K standard prior to KAHU.
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(note the added drag chute, the squared off fin tip for the APX-72 IFF, and the large UHF/VHF antenna)
These are identical in capability to the early 1980s A-4K as far as weapons are concerned, but with the addition of being able to also mount Sidewinders on the inner underwing stations (2 and 4), which came from their time in RAN service.
The thing mentioned above about the CRV7 replacing the Mighty Mouse and Zuni is also a personal gripe I have with the Strikemaster in WT, as it has a mid-1980s configutation (miniature det cord in the canopy, added in the early 1980s due to concerns about ejection sequence timing) with a bunch of stuff that was at that time either no longer used (Mighty Mouse rockets) or never used (SNEBs, SURAs, etc) with the Strikemaster.
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They should be lighter though without the hump and the carrier systems. Unless those were removed.
So, at about the same time as the A-4Gs were undergoing the interim G-to-K conversion (the end result of which can be seen with NZ6213 above), the A-4Ks were themselves also undergoing a transformation.
The avionics humps on the Ks weren’t empty - rather, they’d had the assorted control boxes for things like the jammer installed, but none of the other circuitry, antennae, or even control panels for such systems were fitted to the aircraft. So as a result, they were something of a dead weight.
With the G-to-K conversion going on, the decision was made to remove the humps from the Ks. The result of that far simpler process can be seen with NZ6202 here:
The bridle hooks required for carrier operations had gone from the Ks as early as 1972, per photos (by all accounts they were a bit of a safety hazard), with the Gs seeming to have had their bridle hooks removed as part of the aforementioned G-to-K conversion.
So really, by the time KAHU rolls around, you’d be looking at both sets of aircraft being more or less identical from a flight characteristics and all-up weight perspective. Obviously there would be a bit of difference, but we’re talking something that’s likely in the single-figure to low double-digit kilos range.
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So there’s 3 versions of the A-4K then. What else changed when the K’s underwent a transformation?
Sort of? Roughly speaking:
1970 A-4K has the hump.
1984 A-4G has no hump and a few avionics differences compared to the K (different radios and IFF, 4x Sidewinders)
1988 A-4K has no hump, but is otherwise identical to the 1970 one in terms of capabilities.
1988 A-4G (after interim G-to-K conversion) is practically identical to the hump-less 1988 A-4K (apart from the Sidewinders)
Then you finally get to the A-4K KAHU (technically 1988, but let’s say 1991 to avoid confusion because that’s when the last one finished conversion), where the entire fleet is now modernised A-4Ks with identical capabilities.
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