SAAB J29B Tunnan

The SAAB 29 Tunnan (Swedish for "barrel") was the first Swedish jet fighter originally designed to use a jet engine (I say "originally designed", because the SAAB 21 started out life as a piston-engined design, and was only later modified to use a jet engine). The Tunnan was for its time an advanced design, one of the first operational aircraft to use a fully swept wing, and had a fuselage that used the so-called "area rule". According to some sources it owes some of its aerodynamic design to the Messerschmitt P.1101 [15, pp.76-77]. In 1954 Swedish pilot Capt. Anders Westerlund, flying a J29B, broke the 500 km closed circuit speed record (held earlier by Jaqueline Cochran who had flown an F-86). The following year the Swedes also broke the 1000 km closed circuit record (held earlier by Gp Capt. James Cooksley of RAF flying a Gloster Meteor) [4].

The particular aircraft depicted by this model ("Vit Johan" or "White J") served with Opération des Nations Unies au Congo (ONUC, the United Nations Operation in the Congo) in the early 1960s. The history of the so-called "Congo Crisis" is complex and convoluted, and mostly outside the scope of this article, but in short it was a series of civil wars by various factions within what used to be the colonial Belgian Congo. With regard to the Swedish involvement in ONUC, my understanding is that this was only the second time in the history of Flygvapnet (the Swedish Air Force) that Swedish pilots flew actual combat missions; the first time was during the 1939-1940 war between Finland and Soviet Union, on Gloster Gladiators flown by Swedish volunteers.

Construction Notes

I started this model well over 10 years ago, and did not take any pictures until I got the basic airframe together, hence there are only pictures from the later stages of the project in this article.

Two injection-molded kits of the Tunnan exist in 1/72nd scale: Heller (later re-issued by Airfix) and Matchbox (later re-issued by Revell). Both represent the later J29C and J29F subtypes, not the J29B which I have chosen to model here. The Airfix kit is a 2005 reissue of the Heller kit that dates back to 1978. Despite its age, it is an excellent kit, accurate and reasonably well detailed. I did add some details to the cockpit, and - because the kit represents a J29C and I wanted to build a J29B - I did some rather heavy modification of the wings; the earlier versions of the Tunnan did not have a "dog tooth" on the wing leading edge. Maestro Models has a resin conversion set for this, but I did my modification the "old-fashioned way" by basically cutting part of the leading edge off and sanding the rest of the wing to the right profile (see the photo).

I used Master Model brass pitot tubes, and added a blade antenna cut from 10 thou styrene sheet, but other than that (and the modifications mentioned above), I built the model more or less out of the box, a testimony to the quality of Heller's 1970s kit.

Pieces cut off from wing leading edges (1 inch squares).

Colors and Markings

Some of the ONUC Tunnans were painted in a two-color camouflage pattern; orange stripes were applied on top of this basic camouflage. There are many interpretations of these colors. I have gone approximately with Urban Fredriksson's claims on this (dark brown and dark olive green, FS 595 colors #33105 and #34088 for the basic camouflage). This also seems to match fairly well what [12] says. [14] claims the darker color was actually some kind of blue (the author of the article in [9] has picked this interpretation), and [13] has some completely fantastic scheme that does not correspond to any actual photographs. Also the Print-Scale decal sheet instructions give yet another set of different colors for the basic camouflage, and their claim about the orange stripes seems too dark (FS 595 #20100) as well. For the wing and horizontal tail undersides I used two different shades of Alclad much the way I finished my earlier SAAB Lilldraken model, just to highlight different panels. I "free-handed" the camouflage pattern, including the orange stripes, using my deVilbiss Aerograph Super 63 -airbrush.

In addition to using Tamiya masking tape, this was the first time I tried Oramask 813 masking film. It was easy to cut with my Cricut Maker, and being translucent it is really easy to position.

I finished the model using the normal procedure: Alclad Klear Kote Gloss, then decals, more Gloss, and finally Alclad Klear Kote Semi Matte.

Initial camouflage airbrushed.

Masked for primer and Alclad.

Masked for the background rectangles of UN markings.

Backgrounds of UN markings painted.

Masked for some more natural metal variations.

My notes pinned next to my spray booth. I worked from those, and there is no other way, you have to be able to look at notes or photos when airbrushing.

References Used

The Tunnan is generally well documented. Below are the reference sources I used when building this model. [12, 14, 16, 17] have scale plans, [12] has lots of detail, [5] has a large cutaway drawing. Review of modeling options can be found in [9].

1. Aeroplane Monthly March 1976
2. Aeroplane Monthly February 2007
3. Aeroplane Monthly October 2009
4. Aeroplane Monthly October 2017
5. Air Enthusiast Thirty-three (May-August 1987)
6. Flieger Revue Extra Nr.28
7. Fredsflygarna - FN-flyget i Kongo 1960-1964 (Hellström); Freddy Stenboms Förlag 2003
8. International Air Power Review Volume 13 (Summer 2004)
9. Model Aircraft Monthly Volume 10 Issue 7 - July 2011
10. SAAB Aircraft since 1937 (Andersson); Putnam 1997
11. SAAB Aircraft (James); Archive Photographs Series; Chalford Publishing 1997
12. SAAB J 29B (Karnas & Vallet); Single 34; Mushroom Model Publications
13. SAAB J 29 (Widfelt); Profile Aircraft 36; Profile Publications 1965
14. Scale Aviation Modeller Volume 10 Issue 9
15. Secret Messerschmitt Projects (Radinger & Schick); Schiffer 1996
16. Svenska Flygvapnets Jaktflygplan 1926-84 (Karlström); Flygplansritningar 2; Allt om Hobby 1985
17. Svenska Flygvapnets Spaningsflygplan 1926-1986 (Karlström); Flygplansritningar 4; Allt om Hobby 1988