AJ Savage Notes

This is a placeholder for a more detailed discussion of the North American AJ Savage program.*

North American won a Navy competition for a carrier-based atomic bomber in 1946. It was big enough to carry the projected 10,000-lb Mk 4 atomic bomb.The bomb bay was clearly sized in cross section by its 60-inch diameter. I have wondered why it was so much longer. My best guess is that in was sized in length by 2,000-lb bombs.

 

In response to a question about the tip tanks, they originally had a clear tip for left and right position lights. (Note that the wings are folded in this picture so the tanks are almost upside down...)

Subsequently, the inboard half of the tip was either painted (in some cases it looks like Corrogard) or otherwise made opaque.

*The best 1/72 kit by far is the AJ-2 produced by Anigrand. If you buy it from Nostalgic Plastic (now Rare-Plane Detective), it comes with a CD containing lots of photographs and material on the AJ-2. Click Here for more information on both the kit and the CD.

Since my CD is commercially available, for the time being this blog entry will only contain material not covered in the CD or errors in the material that is included. For example, I didn't know at the time that the AJ-2 vertical fin (retrofitted on the AJ-1 along with the rest of the empennage changes) was 12 inches taller than the AJ-1's. As a result, the kit's vertical fin is about 1/8 inch too short. Since I provided the material on the CD to Nostalgic, I have also photographed the interior of the AJ-2 at the National Museum of Naval Aviation and therefore have identified some minor corrections to the kit's interior.

I built an AJ-1 model from the Airmodel "kit," working on it intermittently for more than a decade.

 

The landing gear and propeller blades were provided by bits and pieces sold by Roberts Model once upon a time. A replacement canopy was vacuformed from a master created from the one in the Mach II AJ Savage kit, which is another huge time waster. The Mk 4 and cart shown above was from 12 Squared and is out of production. However, Spectre Resins produces a Mk 6 which is basically the same except that it had reinforcing ridges around its mid section. No cart, though.

The great Gordon Stevens (Rareplanes, among other brands) also produced a vacuform AJ kit which was very good for the type and could be built as either the AJ-2 or -2P. It included decals. However, it is long out of production and the Anigrand kit is more accurate in a few areas like the propeller blades.

More later...