COBI F-4S Phantom II Set 5899

COBI's F-4S Phantom II "Black Bunny" is a 1:48 model built from 608 blocks, 35.5 cm long, in the gloss black scheme of squadron VX-4. The ailerons move, the landing gear and weapons detach, and the cockpit opens. A display stand with a plate carrying the name and scale is included. All markings are printed; no stickers.

A rabbit on a US Navy fighter

Air Test and Evaluation Squadron Four at Point Mugu in California did the Navy's operational testing — flying new aircraft and weapons hard to find out what they actually did, as opposed to what the manufacturer claimed.

Some time in the 1960s the squadron adopted a white rabbit's head as an unofficial emblem, borrowed from a well-known magazine of the period. It appeared on the tails of the squadron's aircraft for roughly thirty years, and the Navy tolerated it — a test squadron flying one-off aeroplanes has more latitude than a front-line unit, and by the time anyone might have objected it had become a tradition.

The most famous of them was an all-black F-4, the Black Bunny, which appeared at air shows and in photographs throughout the 1970s. The gloss black was not camouflage. It was a test squadron announcing itself.

The S

The F-4S was the last Navy Phantom variant: rebuilt F-4Js with strengthened airframes, leading-edge slats for better turning, and smokeless engines — the original J79 left a visible trail that let enemy pilots see a Phantom long before they could identify it, which had cost lives in Vietnam.

In the COBI range

Set 5897 is the USS Midway Phantom and 5898 the German F-4F, both at this scale.

Specifications

Pieces: 608 · Scale: 1:48 · Display stand and nameplate included · No stickers
Model dimensions: 35.5 × 24 × 12 cm (14.0 × 9.4 × 4.7 in)