Model Aircraft – August 2019

T

he SU-27 was developed as an

answer to the American F-X program,

which resulted in the F-15. The Soviet

leaders had learned that the US was

developing a new ighter that could

present a serious problem for them, so they

decided to develop their own counterpart. The

demands required the new ighter to be long-

range, yet have a short-ield perfomance. It had

to be agile, heavily armed and exceed Mach 2.

The speciications required posed a problem

for the designers, as it would be too costly to

develop one single ighter to ill both roles, so

two were designed instead. The irst version

became the Short Range Tactical Fighter, the

Mig-29 and the second version became the

Heavy Long-Range Fighter, the SU-27 and all

its derivatives. The irst prototype, the T-10

took its maiden light on May 20th, 1977, and

was shortly after was spotted by Western

observers and given the NATO reporting name

‘Flanker-A’. There were several prototypes built

with diferent modiications and updates. The

prototype T-10-15 was renamed T-10S-3

and was the one that the production

speciications were based on when

work started on the Su-27. The

irst production recieved

the NATO designation

‘Flanker-B’.

However, the Prototype T-10S-3 was

still useful. In 1975 the American F-15A ‘Streak

Eagle’ set many altitude and speed-records, and

the Soviet Leaders couldn’t accept that, so after

development of the SU-27 was complete and

the aircraft put into service, the T-10S-3 was put

back into development and redesigned, with

the single mission - to beat all the American

records. The redesign involved shortening the

central tail-boom, reducing the tail area, the

drag chute compartment was removed and the

slats in the front of the wing was welded into

one position. The radar and weapon-systems

were removed and the nose-cone was replaced

by a lighter metal-version. All drag producing

elements were also removed and the even

the paint was stripped. The engines were also

modiied to produce more thrust. The plane

was designated P-42 in commemoration Battle

of Stalingrad in 1942. The plane was ready

in late 1986, and within a year it had

claimed twenty-seven records,

several of which stand to this

date.

Going into this project I was

convinced it would be an easy, quick

build of one of my favourite aircraft. It

began easily enough, putting together the

cockpit from a wide assortment of etched

parts and some nicely detailed resin. You also

need to widen a few openings in the fuselage

to make room for the etched control panel.

There are also some etched parts supposed

to be mounted under the canopy behind the

cockpit tub, but either the instructions are

not completely clear on a couple of points

regarding the etched parts, or I might be a bit

slow, because I had some problems iguring

them out! But in the end, it didn’t matter,

because they wouldn’t it with the canopy, so

they were removed. There is also a number of

T-10S-3

Streak Flanker

Snorre Sandviken builds the recored

breaking 1:48 Eduard SU-27 Prototype

(^64) SU-27 FLANKER B WWW.MODELAIRCRAFTMAG.COM