- Nov 27, 2003
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- Rogue luthier employed at Knooren Handcrafted bass guitars
Well with a lot of documents from Area 51 now being declassified, one of the biggest mysteries has finally been cleared up and it's about THIS plane.
The F-19 Stealth first showed up in model form in the eighties and was available from three main model manufacturers: Revell, Monogram and Italeri. All of them claiming that they had based their models on pictures which had been taken around area 51, thus verifying what they claimed was a genuine model of an existing plane.
And that's the only thing they agreed on because the upper picture is a Revell model and here's the Monogram model.
While the Italeri model goes for another look altogether.
What they also didn't agree on was what it was for and where it was made.
Is it a Lockheed Skunkworks creation?
Is it a fighter?
Is it a bomber?
Who of the three companies who make F-19 Models got the shape right?
Well it had people scratching their heads but the F-19 became a cult classic, there were arcade games, Nintendo games, It appeared in pilot comics (In one particular Buck Danny comic, the artist drew all three versions of the F-19 parked next to each other, probably to make fun of the fact that nobody agreed on what the plane even looked like.) and it even appeared in GI-Joe cartoon series.
Everybody agreed, it was a real plane even though nobody agreed on the actual looks, make or function.
So with the veil of secrecy lifted, it's time to answer the questions:
Is it a Lockheed Skunkworks creation?
- Yes, it's a Skunk works product
Is it a fighter?
- No, it's not a fighter
Is it a bomber?
-It's not a bomber either
Who of the three companies who make F-19 Models got the shape right?
- None of them got the shape right.
As I stated before, the F-19 was based on some very unclear pictures which didn't show the shape of the actual plane in the right way.
Which meant that the model designers went nuts and came up with the designs based on what little they could make out.
The inward tail fins and the wing flaps are there on all the models and Italeri certainly got the Canopy right.
But the Have Blue, as the plane's actual name is, turned out to be VERY different from the Pop-culture icon that the F-19 became.
Certainly when you look at the shape of the plane's wings.
Both Revell and Italeri got the exhausts right but where the notion of the rounded fuselage shape came from is anybody's guess.
Because the Have Blue was a working prototype for the F-117 Stealth fighter
So why wasn't there any answer or statement from the USAF about the F-19 when the models came out, heck why wasn't the CIA involved in stopping the model makers building models from a top secret plane?
Why should they?
After all, they got it all wrong:
- The designation
- The Manufacturer
- The actual function of the plane
- The SHAPE!
I can just imagine the people who worked on the Have Blue project looking at the F-19 and going "Heh, if only they knew what I know..."
The F-19 Stealth first showed up in model form in the eighties and was available from three main model manufacturers: Revell, Monogram and Italeri. All of them claiming that they had based their models on pictures which had been taken around area 51, thus verifying what they claimed was a genuine model of an existing plane.
And that's the only thing they agreed on because the upper picture is a Revell model and here's the Monogram model.
While the Italeri model goes for another look altogether.
What they also didn't agree on was what it was for and where it was made.
Is it a Lockheed Skunkworks creation?
Is it a fighter?
Is it a bomber?
Who of the three companies who make F-19 Models got the shape right?
Well it had people scratching their heads but the F-19 became a cult classic, there were arcade games, Nintendo games, It appeared in pilot comics (In one particular Buck Danny comic, the artist drew all three versions of the F-19 parked next to each other, probably to make fun of the fact that nobody agreed on what the plane even looked like.) and it even appeared in GI-Joe cartoon series.
Everybody agreed, it was a real plane even though nobody agreed on the actual looks, make or function.
So with the veil of secrecy lifted, it's time to answer the questions:
Is it a Lockheed Skunkworks creation?
- Yes, it's a Skunk works product
Is it a fighter?
- No, it's not a fighter
Is it a bomber?
-It's not a bomber either
Who of the three companies who make F-19 Models got the shape right?
- None of them got the shape right.
As I stated before, the F-19 was based on some very unclear pictures which didn't show the shape of the actual plane in the right way.
Which meant that the model designers went nuts and came up with the designs based on what little they could make out.
The inward tail fins and the wing flaps are there on all the models and Italeri certainly got the Canopy right.
But the Have Blue, as the plane's actual name is, turned out to be VERY different from the Pop-culture icon that the F-19 became.
Certainly when you look at the shape of the plane's wings.
Both Revell and Italeri got the exhausts right but where the notion of the rounded fuselage shape came from is anybody's guess.
Because the Have Blue was a working prototype for the F-117 Stealth fighter
So why wasn't there any answer or statement from the USAF about the F-19 when the models came out, heck why wasn't the CIA involved in stopping the model makers building models from a top secret plane?
Why should they?
After all, they got it all wrong:
- The designation
- The Manufacturer
- The actual function of the plane
- The SHAPE!
I can just imagine the people who worked on the Have Blue project looking at the F-19 and going "Heh, if only they knew what I know..."
