by George Ramirez

The battle of Yavin 4 was a tremendous victory for the Rebel Alliance and a turning point in the galactic civil war to restore the Republic. But the tremendously high losses to their X-Wing squadrons proved that they did not posses a fast enough tactical interceptor. Also, Rebel Intelligence was starting to receive information on a new T.I.E. fighter, which was reported to be faster than anything the Rebellion currently had. It was concluded that the fleet would encounter this craft or others like it in increasing number in the years to come. To this end, the Alliance placed a bid for an interceptor to address this issue.

Incom, the manufacturer of the iconic T-65 X-Wing Fighter, entered the race for the contract. A young up and coming engineer, Torvin Drake, proposed the use of the existing X-Wing fuselage as a bases for the new fighter design, the Javelin. The belief was that it would be more cost affective to use the existing assembly lines for the T-65 which would expedite manufacturing when the time came. Drake proposed that the original four engines be replaced with six smaller fuel economy Zincem Multipulse V-15A engines. Each engine contained a ram boost accelerator coil providing it short jumps of 175 MGLT. The engines would provide cruising speed of 115 MGLT. With the new configuration the four turbo-laser cannons were replaced with two smaller ones and two additional pulse turrets mounted “saddle bag” fashion on either side of the fuselage behind and below the cockpit canopy. In order to control the Javelin at extreme speeds and execute quick Hyperdrive jumps, Incom computer engineers provided their latest compact nav-droid module that would be built into the craft.

Nine months after the initial request was sent, Incom unveiled its new interceptor prototype. It would now be competing with others like Kuat Systems Engineering's RZ-1 A-Wing prototype for the contract. Alliance leaders soon saw that the Javelin was a much larger and heavier fighter than the competition.

On the other hand, the test pilots, being X-Wing veterans, loved it. Its speed, rapid acceleration, the ease of handling and computer assisted nav-droid were exceptional. But soon teething problems began. First with the new engines and then with smaller armament capacity began to appear. These delays and the loss of one of the prototypes began to severely hamper the project, which would culminate in the loss of the contract. The fleet admirals and leaders of the Alliance began to see that it would be more economical to go with a much smaller and easier to construct fighter, so the RZ-1 A-Wing won the competition.

But Torvin Drake's dream would not disappear into the annals of “What if”. The Javelin would come back from the ashes and play a pivotal role in saving the future New Republic when…….. oh but wait, that's another story.

The Making of the Javelin

I had originally started out with the idea of making my favorite fighter of all time, the Ranger Interceptor from the Galaxy Rangers animation series. But I couldn't find a kit except a paper one online. But after rummaging through my model collection I came across the X-Wing I never built. I realized that the fuselage was almost identical the the Ranger Interceptor but I could never pass it off as anything else but a beefed up X-Wing . So I figured why not make a new fighter based on the T-65.

Fuselage Assembly

I started by modifying the nose cone to be more wedge shaped. I cut R2-D2, since the Javelin didn't require an astromech droid, and glued in a plug made from the back half of one of the Ion-Canons. Next I glued the fuselage together, I removed the bottom half the where the cargo compartment is located and sealed it with sheet styrene. I also did the same with the end-cap/aft sections of the X-Wing. Using sheet styrene I also walled up the large gaps where the wings mechanism would be, filled the gaps around the edges with contour putty and sanded it smooth.

Engine Assembly

Wing Assembly

The wings were a bit tricky. I cut six triangular pieces of styrene to create the top and bottom of each wing with a winglet on each end. To give the wings a thickness, I glued the top and bottom halves about 2mm apart at the wing root and glued the narrow ends together. These created a small overlap at the bottom half of the wing that I used to glue the winglet on too. After the glue dried I added putty to the leading edge to fill the gap and sanded it smooth. I then applied small square pieces of styrene to ad texture to the wing surface.

Arming the Javelin

Then came the weapons system. I wanted to give the Javelin more firepower but in a smaller package. So I raided my parts box again and found two turrets to a 1/72 scale B-29 form Airfix. These were mounted on the side of the cockpit. Then I took two of the Ion-Cannons form the X-Wing and cut the small back portion off the main housing and shortened the barrel and place them under the wings.

Painting

Since the Javelin was a prototype I wasn't going to attempt to weather it. I chose a shark theme. After applying a primer, I pained the underside flat white and the upper half a light navy gray. Sort of like a Great White shark. After drying and apply a coat of semi-gloss, I started on the decals. Found these WWII black and yellow checkerboard decals and thought of Biggs Darklighter, Lukes old friend and wingman in the first movie. I imagined that the test pilot was a relative of his and was honoring him by having his relative's colors on his ship.

Display Stand

I used the base to the display only. I then cut out a piece of sheet styrene to match the bottom of the base and glued it on in order to seal it. I then took a wire hanger and cut off the long bottom half and cut that in half and bent it so that each end of the wires would go into the exhaust bells of the engines. Then I simply pained it flat black.

Although I couldn't make an exact copy of the Ranger Interceptor, I think Luck Skywalker would have wet his flight suit just thinking about jumping into the Javelin. It was a lot of fun and really challenging. It is by far the most scratch building I've done.

Image: Left side

Image: Underneath

Image: Left/front view, low

Image: Climbing

Image: Top view

Image: Right/rear

Image: Lower