Rocket Launch 08/16/2025

Estes’s Russian SS-1C Scud-B, kit #1340, was a short-run scale kit from the 1980–1981 catalogs that turned a Cold War icon into a flyable, low-power model. In the box you’d find a 60-series body tube with balsa fins, a special plastic scale nose cone, waterslide decals, and an 18 mm engine mount—typical of Estes’s Skill Level 2 offerings of the era. Built stock, the model stands about 21.7 in (55 cm) tall, is 1.64 in (41.7 mm) in diameter, and weighs roughly 2.5 oz. It’s a ~1:20 scale representation of the missile’s lines, including the distinctive ogive warhead section. Flight power is the common 18 mm family; period recommendations included A8-3, B4-4, B6-4, C6-5, and C6-7,

which keep the model’s flights realistic and easily recoverable on a small field. Estes discontinued the kit after its brief run, so originals are considered out-of-production collectibles today, with plans and part references preserved by the scale and cloning community.

The prototype for the kit is the Soviet R-17 “Elbrus,” better known in the West by its NATO reporting name SS-1C Scud-B. Developed at the end of the 1950s as a refinement of the earlier R-11 Scud-A, the single-stage, liquid-propellant R-17 entered service in the early 1960s and became one of the most proliferated tactical ballistic missiles in history. A typical Scud-B is about 11.25 m long,

0.88 m in diameter, and roughly 5,900 kg at launch. It rides to the field on transporter-erector-launchers (TELs) that evolved from early tracked chassis to the familiar MAZ-543 8×8 wheeled vehicle¹ in the mid-1960s, which gave the system notable mobility. The Scud-B’s nominal range is on the order of 300 km with a circular error probable around several hundred meters; warhead options historically included conventional high explosive, chemical, and low-to-medium-yield nuclear payloads. Unlike many more modern ballistic missiles, the Scud-B’s warhead section typically remains attached to the missile

body through flight, which has implications for accuracy and re-entry behavior. Operationally, Scud-Bs shaped several late-20th-century conflicts. Egypt reportedly used small numbers in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, while both sides fired Scuds extensively in the 1980s Iran-Iraq War. Their notoriety in the West peaked during the 1991 Gulf War, when Iraqi variants were launched at targets in Saudi Arabia and Israel, spurring coalition counter-battery,

interception, and “Scud hunt” operations. Because the design was exported widely and licensed or reverse-engineered by multiple states, the Scud-B family served as a springboard for derivative programs around the world and remains a touchstone in discussions of tactical ballistic missile proliferation.

For scale modelers, those broad outlines translate directly into the Estes kit’s choices: the ogival nose reproduces the Scud-B’s R-17 warhead, the simple fin planform reflects the missile’s modest aerodynamic controls, and the model’s ~1:20 proportions produce a credible silhouette without straying beyond what 18 mm motors can lift safely. Surviving instruction scans and reference sheets make it feasible to clone or restore a #1340 today with period-correct parts and markings, keeping this compact tribute to Cold War rocketry flying at local fields.