Coldwar planners knew early on that B36s flying solo atomic missions were sitting ducks, especially as news of Soviet jets began to leak out. The Air Force started looking for innovative ways for the B36 to defend itself. The XF85 was one attempt at an answer.

The XF85 Goblin, in theory, would be carried into hostile territory in the bomb bay of the B36. When an attack was imminent, the tiny fighterjust 1.5" longer than a Volkswagen Bugwould be lowered by means of a trapeze to fight off interceptors. When and if this was accomplished, the XF85 would reattach itself to the trapeze and be hoisted back aboard the mother ship.

The test program showed that was easier said than done. Of the seven free flights Goblins made, three ended with recoveries aboard the test EB29B "Monstro." The remaining four resulted in skidding landings on the Muroc dry lake bed.

The first flight was perhaps the most perilous. Ed Schoch, who was the pilot on every XF85 flight, encountered a wave of turbulence between the Goblin and the EB29B. On his first attempt to reattach to the trapeze, Schoch tried to push the fighter through the turbulence gently, but failed to catch the hook. He circled away and made a second attempt, but this time applied too much throttle to push through the barrier and slammed into the trapeze. The canopy shattered and knocked Schoch's helmet and oxygen mask from his head; observers in the EB29B thought for a moment the helmet tumbling to earth was Schoch's head! Temporarily unconscious, Schoch fell 3000 feet before regaining his composure and bringing the Goblin to a skidding landing.

The program eventually collided with realityin combat, the Goblin would have been ineffective, and each launch would have been a suicide mission, since the plane could not have overtaken and recovered aboard the mother ship with its 52minute flight endurance. But the XF85 paved the way for the FICON program, which produced an operational parasite reconnaissance fighter for the B36.

MPM's kit is the best available of the Goblin, and it includes a photoetched sheet of details and a ground handling dolly. The cockpit goes together easily, but I added the armrests to the seat and a few extra instruments to the control panel area. A spare stick from an SH2F replaced the kit item, and the overhead defroster pipe work was made using bits of solder and wire.

I replaced the intake trunk and tailpipe with lengths of metal tubing, with the kit parts for the turbine blades and exhaust grille. Since I opted to leave the trapeze hook down, I had to do significant filling across the top of the nose.

Once all six of the tail elements and the wings were on, I discovered just how trying building a very small model can be! Holding the model was an adventure; I broke off the tail elements several times and had to repair the model carefully, avoiding scratches and glue marks that would be visible under the natural metal finish. I also made wing fences from sheet styrene to replace the kit's photoetched parts.

Opening the canopy was a major challenge. I discovered the windscreen fit very poorly, so I thermoformed several replacements from a plaster mold of the kit canopy with the proper modifications. The kit also molds part of the fuselage on the clear canopy; I replaced this area with styrene strip and cut my canopy accordingly.

I painted the tail fins yellow, and once they were masked I painted the model with two tones of Model Master aluminum. I replaced most of the structure of the dolly with styrene strips, and replaced the wheels with nose wheels from Hasegawa's S3 Viking.

XF85 Goblin in 1:72 ataglance

Kit: MPM

Ground dolly, canopy, cockpit components, wing fences: scratchbuilt

Decals: from the kit

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