I guess the Air Force thought the camouflages would behave differently after a decade of time. They were developing the concept of the "A-16" (F-16's used in the close air support (CAS) role) and painted a few (seven or eight) F-16Cs in "lizard" camouflage at Nellis AFB. The added color markings made the F-16B more attractive (at least to me) than the rather plain looking F-16A, so I decided to model the F-16B.Īs a side note, the US Air Force was at it again in the early 1990s with the same camouflage testing. The F-16B, however, was in the camouflage for a while and had time to have full unit markings applied for the 34th Tactical Fighter Squadron (TFS). The F-16A that got painted in "lizard" was only briefly left in the paint scheme and had almost no unit markings, just an "HL" tail code. Hence, the Air Force opted to not re-camouflage the F-16 fleet into "lizard". It was also not much benefit over the Hill Gray camouflage with the gray camouflage being indistinguishable from the "lizard" beyond a mile or so. The greens were better at concealing the aircraft over forested regions, but not so good anywhere else. They were F-16A serial number 78-0008 and F-16B serial number 78-0096. Two aircraft from the 388th Tactical Fighter Wing (TFW) were singled out for the test. Back in the very late 1970s, when European camouflage was showing up on everything in the US Air Force, the Air Force tested the camouflage (also referee to as "lizard" and less affectionately as "pickle") on the F-16. The short history of the "lizard" camouflage on the F-16 goes like this. This F-16B kit was near the top of the list of primary projects to liberate from the shelf. Recently, I got on this kick of trying to clear out some of the more permanent residents of my SHELF of DOOM. It has sat there in the following condition since 1992. I kept plugging away, but eventually boxed the kit and assigned it to the SHELF of DOOM. Some of the things I wanted to do were simply outside my abilities at the time, but I would not settle for less than what I was thinking in my head. I started wanting to fix, enhance, and update too many things about the kit. It started as a simple enough concept and project, but then Advanced Modelers Syndrome (AMS) set in like it does from time to time. I decided to take out one of the newly released (at that time) Hasegawa 1/48th scale F-16 kits for a test drive and build the two-seat F-16B in "lizard" green camouflage. But, this got me looking closer at these aircraft for myself. I found him some documentation with pictures and a camouflage diagram in the old Detail&Scale book (Volume #13) on the F-16. I was working at a hobby shop at the time (that is like having a wolf guard the sheep), and this guy walked in looking for information regarding the "lizard" painted F-16's. It was started all the way back in January of 1992, over 17 years ago.
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