1/32 recovered B-17 - UPDATE 12/10/13 - FINISHED - YAY!

[richdlc]

Hey everyone

well after threatening to do it & lurking for several months whilst accumulating reference books etc, I have taken the plunge & started on my idea for a crashed B-17 dio in 1/32!

I found several images of crashed aircraft in The Netherlands, France & the UK. I became obsessed with the idea of doing a recovered fuselage, on a trailer, being pulled by a suitable vehicle. I have settled on the idea of building an 8th Air Force machine having crash landed back at a UK base. It will be a 'G' model as I think they're the coolest. basically

I want to do an O/D machine rather than natural metal, so that kind of limits the timeframe I can depict the aircraft from & I'll have to be really careful about what details need adding...or leaving off.

I've got some excellent reference books, and there's hundreds of images of both original & restored machines on the net, so I'm spoiled for choice - the B-17 has to be one of the most documented aircraft in history!

Here's some inspirational shots I found on the net:

B-17 on its way to a smelter's yard in occupied Holland



another aircraft shot down in occupied France:



And a USAAF C2 wrecker towing a B-17 in England, date unknown:





Unfortunately there is no kit of the C2 wrecker available, so I will be using the superb Accurate Armour 1/35 kit of the Diamond T wrecker:



I will probably scratchbuild a suitable trailer. I will start a new thread in 'non-LSP works' showing this...but for now, here's what I've done with the fuselage. I won't need wings, engines, tailplanes, rudder etc which is fortunate as I don't have them.

I've roughly cut the fuse halves out & cleaned them up a little, drawn on panel lines & opened up the crew and tail gunner access doors. I used the 1/100 scale plans in the back of the superb Aero Detail book. These will serve as a rough guide for the panels, which I will make one by one from thin sheet pewter. My dad is using this technique on his 1/32 Lancaster & it looks great.









that's it for now - this is going to be a (very) long term project & I'll check back in with any progress

cheers
Rich

Edited October 12, 2013 by richdlc

[Guest]

All right Rich. I was hopping you would finally start this. Its gonna be awesome Will be watching for sure. Good luck.....Harv :popcorn:

[richdlc]

thanks harv - I will need it lol

 

I have learned my lesson & will only be scratching what can be seen

 

I've got lots of photos of heavily damaged machines that struggled back to base - my intention is to have a large ragged hole in the side from a flak burst, which will give the advantage of showing off more of the interior. It'll be a challenge to scratch stuff that's essentially battle damaged but I'm up for it

 

cheers

rich

[Ads]

Go for it Rich! I hope to see you lurking around it at telford award tables this year again!

 

Ads

[Daywalker]

Excellent choice, I will too watch this one with great interest!

 

As another alternative to the wrecker, could you put the Tamiya M26 Dragon Wagon cab to use?

 

Image snagged off of the net

[LSP_Mike]

Good one Rich. The AA wrecker should be just the ticket, although the Tamiya kit has a nice trailer. Does AA make a WWII Brit wrecker/trailer combo?

[LSP_Ron]

Looks like a great project, a little big Armour and a little big aircraft

[LSP_Paul]

Rich,

I thought your Corsair was a cool idea /diorama last year, this year the B-17 wreck/recovery is going to take the cake! I'll be following along too!

Best of luck.

Paul

[richdlc]

thanks a lot guys! I'm aware of the Dragon Wagon, but I feel it's been done to death. I'm also not sure it was available to the US Army in the UK....Accurate Armour does do a British vehicle, yes, the Scammell Pioneer

 

 

and they also do a series of trailers - fortunately the trailer I'm looking at doing is very basic & within the realms of scratchbuilding possibility. The only prohibiting factor with Accurate Armour is the price - the wrecker cab alone will set me back £175....so I'll keep an eye out for a second hand one. But I definitely want to build one as for some reason I've always loved vehicles with 6 wheels

 

anyway, thanks for looking, updates to follow ASAP

 

Rich

[JRutman]

This is an outstanding idea and will look awesome when done. My vote is for the Scammel but if it costs too much I can understand.

J

[Tomek]

Way to go Richard!

This should be really interesting. You took a lot of time to prepare for this so I'm expecting only jaw dropping results! hahaha! Pressure on!

Have fun

[jeroenpeters]

Great subject!

You might wanna consider a Ward LaFrance:

 

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_LaFrance_M1/M1A1

 

These baby's were used in Europe a lot for these jobs.

 

Here you go:

 

http://www.accurate-armour.com/ShowProduct.cfm?manufacturer=0&category=14&subcategory=23&product=162

 

Cheers,

Jeroen

Edited March 19, 2012 by jeroenpeters

[richdlc]

*update 30th march 2012*

 

Well, I managed to get some more done on the B-17...

 

I've found some amazing photo references online from B-17s being restored & renovated, & I really want to go to town on this build now Here's a link to a fantastic site where the B-17G at Duxford is being renovated, which I will probably be referring to heavily from now on:

 

http://www.warbirdinformationexchange.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=40406&start=105

 

I'm planning to open up the life raft compartments for starters, and have as many other open hatches as possible.

 

Back to the kit First things first - getting the fuselage halves to fit...

vacform kits are a steep learning curve for me - rule number 1 is that nothing fits! I found a crude but effective method for the fuse halves - I basically removed as much of the casting 'lip' around the mating part of each half as I could, and then held the fuse halves together with elastic bands - I let the natural tension of the bands pull the pieces together & then if they overlapped, I removed the offending bit of plastic from one half. The result is that any imperfection or wavy line on one half should (in theory) be compensated for exactly on the other half...the end result was fuse halves that fit together quite well.

 

Of course the solution would be to have a huge sanding board or a belt sander or something...but I don't. This method has worked OK but it's pretty basic. As long as the fuse halves are together & it 'looks' right then I'm happy - I just have to remember NOT to use the fuse join line as any kind of reference when deciding if another part is on straight!

 

Here's some shots of the two halves joined - everything just about fits, although I will have to make adjustments as I go along. Most of the openings have been cut out, but there's more I can add:

 

 

 

 

you'll notice that I've also removed the fuselage/main wing joins that were moulded onto the fuselage halves - on my kit, the castings were off on one side, making them lopsided when viewed head on. Although I will need the tapering bits where the wing root meets the fuselage, I decided it would be easier to completely remove the offending protuberances. I sanded everything flush & plugged the holes with a few sheets of plastic card cut to shape. These don't have to be perfect, as the new wing join structure will be added over the top, and the entire thing eventually 'skinned' with pewter sheet. You can see that the fuse is now much more of a 'tube' in this shot:

 

 

You can also see that I removed the moulded on nose piece (an 'F' model shape). Unfortunately, most of the clear pieces provided as part of the kit are of poor quality & unusable... I had planned to show the nose perspex smashed anyway to show off more of the interior...I'll decide what to do on that score at a later date...

 

Finally, for now, I removed the top of the rear gun position - the vac kit again has an 'F' model tail and I need to build a 'G' model Cheyenne tail turret. The turret itself was modular, and could be removed. I considered doing this, but then decided it would look nicer to have a tail gun after all. The Cheyenne has a very distinctive shape, and the access tunnel tapers into a kind of teardrop shape culminating in the guns - I will have to scratch this as the kit part is unsuitable & too wide:

 

 

that's it for now - more updates as and when

 

Rich

[JRutman]

I am liking where you are going with this project. It will be very cool when done.

J

[richdlc]

thanks jerry - can't wait to get stuck into the meaty bits!