Anyone steeped in Star Wars lore knows the meaning of this casually said yet iconic line, first uttered by Darth Vader mid way through his confrontation with son, Luke Skywalker, in the feature film The Empire Strikes Back. Interestingly, it also has some bearing on today’s military diecast market now that Hobby Master has officially announced the second Northrop YF-23 fifth-generation fighter, the so-called “Black Widow II”.
Formally designated as the YF-23A, the first aircraft (serial number 87-0800), Prototype Air Vehicle 1 (PAV-1), was rolled out on June 22nd, 1990. PAV-1 took its 50-minute maiden flight on August 27th with chief test pilot Alfred “Paul” Metz at the controls. The second YF-23 (serial number 87-0801, PAV-2) made its first flight on October 26th, piloted by Jim Sandberg. The first YF-23 was painted charcoal gray and was nicknamed “Spider”. The second prototype was painted in two shades of gray and nicknamed “Gray Ghost”. PAV-1 briefly had a red hourglass painted on its ram air scoop to prevent injury to ground crew. The red hourglass resembled the marking on the underside of the black widow spider, further reinforcing the unofficial nickname “Black Widow II” given to the YF-23 because of its 8-lobe radar cross section plot shape that resembled a spider and as homage to the Northrop P-61 Black Widow of World War II. When Northrop management found out about the marking, they had it removed.
According to their latest literature, Hobby Master claims that we can expect the “Black Widow II” towards the end of the year, largely dependent upon the tariff situation with Bangladesh, where Hobby Master products are made. Word from our distributor is that the first YF-23 is pre-selling exceptionally well, so we anticipate sales of the second version to be as strong if not stronger largely due to its sinister appearance. As a guess, both models were on the assembly line simultaneously to take advantage of any cost savings associated with producing two models at the same time rather than in piece-meal fashion. If that is the case, we expect images of the second model to be forthcoming, perhaps over the summer.