1/72 F-20 Tigershark JASDF
Building Hasegawa's 1/72 F-20 Tigershark

Finished! Hasegawa's 1/72 F-20 Tigershark in "what-if" JASDF camo.


The Northrop F-20 Tigershark was the successor to the F-5 Freedom fighter/Tiger II, also built by Northrop. It exchanged the F-5's twin General Electric J85 turbojet engines, for a single General Electric F404 Turbofan, providing approximately a 60% increase in thrust. It also recieved slightly updated aerodynamics, and improved avionics and payload options.

It was intended as a "light fighter" a smaller, cheaper, more maneuverable aircraft, both for export and to compete with the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon. Sadly due to suspicious political behavior and apathy on the part of the US armed forces, the F-20 was never adopted into service, and never exported due to a clause that it would only be exported if it was adopted by the US in some role.

With a top speed exceeding mach 2 (2,124 km/h), a pair of 20mm M39 cannons, and various ordnance options including the latest AAMs, it would certainly have proved a challenge for Soviet fighters of the time. The F-20 Tigershark is sometimes called "The best plane the US never had".

The kit was reasonable to build. The molds were getting a little worn (the kit came out in the 80s after all) and so there was slight amounts of flash on some of the parts, nothing too serioues however. Fit was reasonable, and in the end I didn't have to use any filler.

My main problem with building the kit was the kit only really intends for you to build it with landing gear down, so I had to modify both the gear doors and gear bay in order to create a good flush surface so as to display it in flight. This was an even larger problem with the nose landing gear, as the door provided for that was simply far too small, meaning I had to actually make a new one out of a spare part of sprue. It doesn't fit quite perfectly, but it's significantly better than the intended piece. The cockpit was rather empty and basic, and the decals were a somewhat poor fit, but I did the best I could and I think what you see through the canopy looks ok.


When getting this kit, I decided that I wanted to build it as a fictional "what-if" assuming that if it had entered service, it would have perhaps been popular with the JASDF due to its small size and agility. As such I had to come up with a camo and marking scheme, and decided to base it on the F-104Js that were in JASDF service, as I am rather fond of their camouflage schemes. As such I went with a bare aluminium finish for most of the aircraft, but with white wings, black intakes. and red drop tanks.

The wings I actually painted before fitting to the aircraft, as this let me get a much better covering with the paint, making sure that I got all of them. I then fitted them to the aircraft and masked them.

The canopy pieces were dipped in Pledge floor polish in order to give them a more glass like glossy appearance, and were then masked before being glued onto the aircraft.

Next I painted the whole aircraft black, as a base coat for the aluminium, I actually left the engine nozzle off so I could paint it seperately. I also masked the nose and anti-glare strip so as not to paint them in aluminium.

All the paints I used were Vallejo with one exception, using white primer for the wings, black primer for the base coat, engine intakes, anti-glare strip and small details, light blue-grey for the nose, metallic aluminium for the main aluminium colour, and metallic gunmetal for the majority of the engine nozzle. The part of the engine nozzle where it connects to the aircraft I painted using humbrol chrome silver, to reflect a heat coating. And of course I used Vallejo RLM red for the drop tanks. And as usual I used Pledge floor polish as my clear coat.


The decals were again based off the marking scheme of the F-104J. I ordered some hinomaru to use for the main markings, and used some of the kit's included decals, as well as a few from my spares. I am very pleased with the result! I was even able to put the aircraft's name in Japanese along the side due to the kit including a manufacturer's kit name decal from Hasegawa.

I built and painted this entire kit in one day, and finished the clear coat this morning, making this one of my fastest builds yet, something I could never have accomplished this quickly and neatly without my airbrush.

In the end, i'm very pleased with how this turned out, and I think I will definitely be using this aluminium again for future aircraft! I plan to hang the kit from the ceiling in my room, alongside my 1/72 Su-47 Berkut.