In 1961, the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm was very interested in acquiring the US Navy's latest carrier borne fighter, the McDonnel-Douglas F-4 Phantom. It seemed the answer to all their problems of a successor to the Sea Vixen, twin-boomed fighter, which would fly from the planned CV-01 carrier.
However, a monetary crisis intervened and the British Government firmly put it's foot down and declared that the successor to the Sea Vixen would, it seems be well, another Sea Vixen!
De Havillands had worked out how to fix some of the worse problems of the Sea Vixen. It improved the size and the shape of the Sea Vixen's radar scanner and brought the radar operator out of his "Coal Hole" and placed him in a tandem cockpit, behind the pilot, where his eyes would be useful in a dog fight. They improved the missiles carried by the aircraft, adding some Blue Jay radar homing missiles, based on the Red Top IR guided missile. They retained the Red Tops the previous versions had been armed with as well and kept the 30mm Rarden cannons, much to the delight of the pilots.
The model is based on an illustration of an F-14 nose which was added to a Sea Vixen fuselage, which I have unfortunately lost track of. It fitted surprisingly well, actually, coming from a Hobby Craft kit. The Missiles were converted from standard Red Tops. The fuselage is from a Frog kit.
