YF-19 Alternate Livery Line Art: USN VF-1 Wolfpack Inspired

[JNordgren42]

I'm in the final stages of my Hasegawa 1/48 VF-1S build in low visibility Jolly Rogers livery. I've had a lot of fun with the build and really expanded my repertoire of techniques. It's really rekindled my love of Macross and after rewatching Macross Plus, I really want to do a YF-19 build next. But me being me, I can't do an out of the box build and want to do something different again. So I'm delving back into the waters of the US Navy (pun intended) and the F-14 Tomcat that so heavily influenced the VF-1 design. The Jolly Rogers have always been my favorite aircraft livery, but the VF-1 (not to be confused with the Valkyrie) Wolfpack markings are also up there, especially the first high visibility iteration when they were the first squadron to get the Tomcat. In order to make sure it is feasible with the aftermarket Wolfpack decal sets available, I did a quick scaling exercise to see how the YF-19 might look with the iconic red wolf tail and nose flash. My OCD being what it is, that quick and dirty sketch ballooned into a full blown foray into an Illustrator line drawing. The lines are based on the paint guide included in the Hasegawa 1/48 YF-19, and I'm really liking how it looks in the white, light gull grey, and red markings. 

So without further ado, I give you my alternate dimension YF-19: assigned to US Navy Fighter Squadron VF-1, call sign Wichita 100

I still need to do the bottom at some point, but I'm confident I can get the paint job done with the available decals.

Here is the inspiration for the design. VF-1 was the first squadron to receive the F-14 Tomcat, I love the old high visibility markings with the stark red on the grey and white. The radome tan nose is a nice little touch and I included it on the YF-19 livery:

 

Edited July 6 by JNordgren42

[Bolt]

Looks awesome. Very much looking forward to seeing this come together.

[Seto Kaiba]

Very slick, well done!

As a fun fact, some of the very oldest Macross setting materials mention a VF-1 Wolfpack in the UN Forces during/after the events of the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series.  It's implied to be a continuation of the famous US Navy squadron, which survived the war and was subsequently assigned to ARMD-10 Haruna alongside the VF-2 Bounty Hunters.  (There was also a set of Wolfpack decals for the Yamato VF-0 toy, though by that point VF/SVF-1 had since been established to be the Skulls.)

[guyxxed]

Just adding my thumbs up to the line, really nice looking scheme and well executed.  Nice work!

[JNordgren42]

On 7/5/2025 at 11:39 PM, Bolt said:

Looks awesome. Very much looking forward to seeing this come together.

It's probably going to be a bit, I'm planning on getting back to my Polar Lights 1/350 Refit USS Enterprise after this. It's a monster model and I'm doing a full custom lighting rig for it. But I'll probably use the YF-19 as a palette cleanser when I need a break from the Big E.
 

11 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Very slick, well done!

As a fun fact, some of the very oldest Macross setting materials mention a VF-1 Wolfpack in the UN Forces during/after the events of the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series.  It's implied to be a continuation of the famous US Navy squadron, which survived the war and was subsequently assigned to ARMD-10 Haruna alongside the VF-2 Bounty Hunters.  (There was also a set of Wolfpack decals for the Yamato VF-0 toy, though by that point VF/SVF-1 had since been established to be the Skulls.)

Thanks! And that's neat info. It would have been cool to see a Wolfpack inspired theme in one of the shows. 

1 hour ago, guyxxed said:

Just adding my thumbs up to the line, really nice looking scheme and well executed.  Nice work!

Thanks!

[JNordgren42]

I finished up the bottom view:

[JNordgren42]

Here are the final versions of the 3 views I did. I did some clean up and added a gradient to denote metallic leading edges on the flight surfaces.