by Thomas Ng

The Aermacchi MB-339AM, or locally knows as  'Macchi', is RMAF intermediate trainer A total of twelve aircrafts were ordered and delivered in 1983 with a replacement N0 .13 aircraft joint the fleet later,

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Beside providing trainee pilot the basic weapon training, TUDM Macchi also have a secondary ground-attack role, it 6 hard points and a maximum weapons load of 1814kg, it can carry a variety of bombs, rockets and gun pods to fulfill these roles, however the normal configuration for flight training is with 2 fuel tanks carried on station 2 and 5.

MB-339 is set to soldier on for the years to come, and in fact RMAF had announced to acquire the retired Kiwi MB-339Cs to partner with the exiting MB339AM and Hawk Mk108 to fulfill the LIFT role.

The Macchi wear a unique dark yellow/ dark green camo pattern, the paint scheme chosen in this model depict the early paint scheme with FTC 3 that have the orange training band on the nose and outer tip tank surface., later the orange band were removed from the aircraft to suite it ground-attack look.