Skyhawk Aircraft from the 1965 TV series ‘Thunderbirds’ created by Gerry Anderson

In the episode ‘Edge of Impact’ we meet Tim Casey, who is heading up the experimental ‘Red Arrow’ aircraft project. When the project runs into trouble – courtesy of The Hood - Casey is kicked off the project. He drops in to visit his old friend Jeff Tracy.

His private jet is the Skyhawk. This appears to be a standard, commercial private jet. The same type of aircraft appears in ‘End of the Road’ and is flown by Eddie Houseman. A similar type of aircraft is flown by TinTin in ‘The Cham-Cham’ and ‘Give or Take a Million’.

This looks like the basis of this was the Airfix 1/72nd scale model kit of the Sauders Roe 53.

This painting was done for a ‘What If - Fantasy Box Art’ and I chose to mimic the Airfix DeHavilland Chipmunk box art by Roy Cross - the master. This airfield in the background is pretty true to what you see in the episode. including the Red Arrow hangar, and the bank of three hangers with what look like updated ‘WASP Fighter-Bombers’. Also in this sequence we see a TX-204 parked on the tarmac so I have included two here as well as two of the Army trucks seen in ‘The Imposters’. The distant control tower is based on the one we see at the Air Show in ‘The Duchess Assignment’.

This was a lot of work and a lot of fun to paint.

Designed by Derek Meddings and/or Mike Trim

Here is a link to the Red Arrow

To see more take a look at this video -What If Fantasy Model Kit #21