ChuckD

Iain, I'm really enjoying your work on this. Thanks for taking the time to document. It's really great to watch. The only thing stopping me from buying the Liberator is that I've just gotten going on my B-17. I'll be watching your progress to see how it goes. Subscribed! Thanks!

The first part of this (re)build will be a bit hodge podge. Where I can easily remove kit plastic parts to replace with more detailed PE parts, I will. But, I'm not going to stress too much about it if an injection-molded part is used. I'm not a rivet counter, nor am I overly obsessed with details and having everything just perfect. Ejector pin marks in hard-to-reach, and hard-to-see places don't bother me. In the end, as long as the final product looks like a decent rendition of 41-2446 as she would have looked sitting on the ramp at Garbutt Field, I'm happy. One benefit to having no references of the real aircraft is that I get a bit of creative license. I have quite a bit of aftermarket interior parts to use on this build. I bought the Big Ed interior set from Eduard, along with a set of brassin wheels, and .50 cal gun barrels. The kit barrels are garbage. After organizing all the plastic, here is a shot of the aftermarket. Having slogged through an intense amount of PE on my 1/144 USS Chevalier last summer, PE doesn't really scare me like it used to. That said, soldering still escapes me, so every bit of PE you see will be constructed and affixed with super glue. If it worked on the Chevalier, it'll work here. As with any aftermarket, I usually start with the instructions. This took a bit as I had to go over the plastic, what I'd built, what needed to be built, and determine what could be removed and what could stay. Anything circled will be added, anything crossed out will remain a kit part that's already in place. The highlighted parts are unpainted PE parts that need to be stuck in place and painted prior to adding any of the pre-painted bits from the PE sets. Another boneheaded lesson I learned on a different kit a few years ago. (sigh^2) First, I removed any parts that would be replaced by PE or that would hinder painting the floorboards. And so my PE journey and the rebirth of the 41-2446 in 1/32 form begins with a humble start. Some quick detail added to the overhead ammo can for the left cheek gun. So far, I'm pretty happy with the Eduard PE set. It's clean, bends well, and the instructions are decent. My only gripe is that it really should have been marketed as a detail kit for the B-17F, not the "B-17E/F" as all of the instructions are shown for the F-model with the larger cheek windows. Thus, I'm left to guessing quite a bit on the internals and where parts go or don't go. Here's an ammo box holder for the bulkhead below the pilots' feet. I need to go out and get some ultra-thin superglue as having it would have made that rear join much cleaner. Oh well. The pic makes it looks worse than it is, and once it's installed, that tiny gap will be invisible. Here is the progress I've made thus far. Again, I'm starting with the unpainted stuff that will need to be painted along with the interior bulkheads. Once those are all painted, I'll slap on the Eduard pre-painted stuff. So far, so good. I'll be approaching this just like I did my Chevalier... one section at a time. I intend to treat each compartment as its own mini-project, a tactic aided by the breakdown of the Eduard kits. Stay tuned, I'm hoping to have a couple updates a week as I push through this project.

My entry into the Multi-Engine Group Build is B-17E 41-2446, the aircraft that would go on to become the famous "Swamp Ghost." This site gives a good overview of her ordeal as one of the first handful of bombers the USAAF would throw at the Japanese. In short, she left Australia on February 22nd, 1942 to bomb Japanese positions at Rabaul. Shot up over the target and leaking fuel, the pilot, Fred Eaton opted to put her down in a grassy field north of the Owen Stanley mountain range in New Guinea. As it turns out, the "grassy field" was actually the Agaimbo swamp and the bomber settled into the mud. The crew abandoned her after dutifully disposing of the Norden bombsight, and ultimately returned to combat duty later. For many years, she lay undisturbed. Rediscovered in the 1970s, visited in the 1980s, and ultimately recovered and exported over many years beginning in 2006, she is the only B-17E still in original battle condition. My intent is to build this kit into 41-2446 as she would have appeared at some/any point during her short career prior to her loss. This presents a couple of challenges. First, there are - to my knowledge - no known images of the aircraft before she was shot down, so I'll have to make some educated guesses as to configurations and whatnot. Secondly, and perhaps the biggest challenge, is that she was equipped with the Sperry remotely-operated belly turret. The HKM kit which I'll be using does not have this, so I'll have to take a shot at building it from scratch. I've never done any scratch building of this magnitude, so any guidance is appreciated. Lastly, general references for the B-17E (particularly internal photos) are pretty hard to come by. Boeingimages.com is turning out to be pretty helpful, though most of the pics of E models appear to be pre-war, factory-fresh aircraft. There were a handful of post-crash photos taken during the war which give some clues as to her general configuration and painting. She carried the early-war insignia with red center, her rudder was striped red & white, she likely had the large "US ARMY" marking on her underwing, and her vertical stabilizer was a slightly different/lighter OD green than the rest of the ship. Beyond that, I'm guessing she was a pretty standard early B-17E. Happily, I visited her in her new location in June of 2018, so I have some first hand pics. Sadly, however, she's pretty well stripped of most parts and you aren't allowed around the rear of the ship. So, the pics I could take were limited to the forward section. Here is the album of my trip. I'll be using the Hong Kong Models B-17E/F kit for the build with some Eduard extras thrown in. I started this kit in February 2017, but my heart wasn't in it and the build stalled. I'm excited to get back to it now as I feel my skills have improved over the last 2 years such that I can make an actual attempt at doing this kit and aircraft justice. You'll see in some of my "current-state" photos that my initial efforts were sub-par. I didn't realize much of the floor work is plywood and my chipping efforts were very unsatisfactory. That said, I'll be repainting almost everything that's been painted so far, so we'll be taking a few steps back from what is the current state. In discussing it with the mod team, I've been given the green light for the sub-25% rule. That said, here is the current state of affairs. Work bench on the left, paint bench w/references in the middle, and the big plastic parts in the kit box on the right. Organization is key to my sanity in the workshop. I usually spend about a half hour every evening straightening up after a bench session. Assembled references. Taking suggestions for anything that shows the remote-turret or other interior fittings in detail. Everything you see here is the current-state from my 2017 efforts. I have to eat crow here and fess up to the fact that I clearly did not do my homework with respect to painting the interior. Sigh. The guns turned out passable. The step where the previous project died: Cleaning up the bombs. I remember clearly having a "screw this" moment and immediately boxing the kit back up. Fortunately, I had the sense to mask the inside of the windows before painting. I shouldn't have installed them in the first place, but apparently I was off my medication or somesuch that day. With that said, I'm ready to start tackling this kit properly.

Having laid out the B-17E kit for inventory, it's taking every bit of my reserve to not start building.

Thank you! Without extensive mottling a monotone scheme like this will get dull really quickly. Hope you found it helpful. Check out Doogs Models for more info and videos on "black basing" and mottling.

FIN. I hope you enjoy. Tomorrow I clean the workshop and get everything organized to kick off my entry into the Multi-Engine Group Build: A 1/32 rendition of the aircraft that came to be known as "Swamp Ghost."

Exhausts were painted Vallejo Burnt Umber and weathered with black pastels and pencil graphite for a final sheen.

It is with great pleasure that I present my completed 1/32 P-40E in the livery of the 7th FS, 49th FG in Darwin, Australia, 1942. I've been on a big early-Pacific-war kick lately (see also: Guadalcanal-era Wildcat), so I decided to pull this off the shelf and give it a go. The trick is that I decided to do that on December 15th and I'm planning to join the Multi-Engine Group Build with my HKM B-17E on January 1. Can't have something else cluttering the bench, so I challenged myself to put out a reasonably quality product by December 31st, or 16 days from start to finish. If you'd like to see the build process, I was fairly verbose in the WIP thread. This was built out of the box except for a couple minor things. The shoulder harnesses came from the spares bin (I think for a P-39) and the lap belts are Tamiya tape. The aerial wire is EZ Line and the rear iron sight is scratch built from the spare PE left over on a StuG III kit I did years ago. Much better than the ridiculous molded plastic rear sight. The kit is really pretty good and fits together well, though I remain baffled on several of Hasegawa's engineering decisions. Neither the separate tail section or the rear canopy glass are done on a panel line, so extensive filling, sanding, and rescribing are needed... something that I did a so-so job on. A little more thought to the engineering on this would have taken a "really solid" kit to a "superb" kit. Markings are Montex masks and decals. Paints and finishing materials are a mix of everything. Tamiya, MRP, Vallejo, etc. Though, I will give a tip that I found an absolutely perfect "flat" clear that I'll use from here on out. It's a 1:1 mix of Vallejo Gloss Varnish and Vallejo Matt Varnish thinned 3:1 with their airbrush thinner. E.g. 3 parts gloss, 3 parts matt, 18 parts thinner. It's not dead flat, but few things are, and that mix gave me a perfect finish for oil filtering. Anyway, on to the pics. My first time working with masks. Turned out pretty well despite making rookie mistakes and over-complicating the process for myself. (sigh) Scratch-built rear iron sight Cockpit. See the WIP thread for more detailed photos.

Thank you all for the compliments. Modulation is the only way to liven up what is a fairly monotone scheme on this beast. Thank you. That was really my problem and the lesson learned here. I more or less did the first insignia backwards and essentially assembled the mask on the kit from individual pieces. Ugh. In the end, the results were solid, but... bleh... Like I said, lesson learned. Okay, so... time for an update. Spoiler alert: There will be an RFI post shortly. (!!!) After my pic update yesterday - well, to be completely honest... during my pic dump yesterday - I realized I still had to put on all the kit decals. That was a bit of a downer as I hate decals. A lot. Especially Tamiya and Hasegawa decals. They are always so thick that they never seem to settle into surface details and silver like the dickens. My loathing for Hasegawa decals is what actually drove me to look for Montex masks for this build. Nevertheless, I forged ahead and the only semi-major difficulty is/was some silvering on the prop stenciling. Everything else turned out okay. Truthfully, this is probably one of those "own worst critic" things, as if I didn't point it out, it probably would go completely unnoticed. Anyhoo... After the decals were done, I faded/blended them a bit by overspraying a very heavily-thinned OD green. The effect is subtle, but very pleasing to the eye. I then clear coated the whole model with a 1:1 mix of Vallejo gloss clear and Vallejo matt clear thinned 3:1. This is the first time I tried this mix and it sprays absolutely beautifully and gives a perfect satin finish. I was really happy with this and it will likely be my go-to "flat" coating. After that was chipping. This was done by the sponge method with Vallejo model color, then enhanced with a silver prismacolor pencil. Very happy with the results here too. At some point in the day, I decided to tackle a problem that's been bugging me for a while: The ridiculous injection-molded iron-sight. This crap... ... just ain't gonna cut it. Sooooo, I fished around in my spares bin and found a Dragon PE set from some random StuG III that I did years ago, and in it, was a part that was just about perfect... I carefully drilled out a smaller hole: Then superglued stretched EZ Line across the opening. Cut the EZ Line to length, then added another piece from the PE set and, viola! Much-less-crappy-iron-sight ahoy. After that, things are a bit of a blur. It's now ~6pm EST and I've been working on this kit since 8am this morning. Brush painting, clear coats, aerial wiring, landing gear, unmasking canopies, etc, etc, etc. As a bit of a teaser... (RFI is here!)

Next, I moved on to spraying the national insignias via a Montex mask. I've never done that before, so I learned some interesting lessons along the way. In the end, I'm pretty pleased with the result. This aircraft had the pre-war star-with-red-circle insignia which was painted over mid-1942, so I tried to replicate that. Masking for the wing-leader's stripe. Wing leader and unit number markings complete. The tail number is apparently supposed to be crooked. After spraying a quick shot of Vallejo clear gloss on the appropriate areas, I applied the decals to the aircraft. And here's how she sits now. Next is a mist of base coat to dull down & blend some of the decals, then clear coat them to protect them. After that I've got some brushwork to do on the tailwheel canvas boot, the guns, ejection slots, light bulbs, and a few other places, then it's on to filters, washes, a little bit of chipping and hopefully the finish line by Monday.

The upper surface started with Tamiya Deep Green. Moved on to Olive Green: And continued with Olive Drab which seemed too dark when I got done, so I thinned a mix of Olive Drab and White and oversprayed the whole upper surface. I forgot to capture a pic of that process in finality. Whoops. Suffice to say, that final coat tied it all together nicely as you'll see. (NYYYYYYAAAAAAAARRRRRROOOWWWWWWWWWW) I then masked and painted the wheel wells. I'm a bit paranoid about overspray, even though I'm only shooting at ~12-15psi. There were some odd nooks and crannies here that I had to get to and I didn't want to risk it. The results speak for themselves:

I'm sitting here waiting for the decals to dry, so it's time for a content dump. It's been a busy couple days and I think I may still be on track to finish this build before the end of the year. When last we left, I was ready to start shooting paint. Not surprisingly, that's what I've been doing a lot of the last couple days. On both the upper and lower surfaces, I built up several thin coats of varying tones. The bottom was several custom mixes of Tamiya grays and a little olive drab thrown in for tonality's sake. I mottled the whole thing heavily and built up the coats unevenly to help with the paint modulation effect. First mottle done, very dark. Part way through the second mottling coat, this time with a lighter mix. Done with the 2nd coat. Aaaand done with the 3rd and final coat. I believe this was a ~50/50 mix of Tamiya light gray and white. I thinned it pretty heavily so the darker coats would still come through a bit. Then, it's on to masking the demarcations between the upper and lower surfaces. According to the paint guide, the chin had a hard line between the two colors and the tail had a softer demarcation. So, I used a mix of straight-up tape and a tape+silly putty. Silly putty is one of my absolute most favorite masking tools. Quick, easy, no residue, cleans up nicely, and cheap. Pretty perfect. You'll see a lot of it throughout my posts. Roll the putty into a rope and gently stick it to the surface of the model. Spray indirectly over the putty and you have a nice soft demarcation. Fortunately, the cowl masking followed a panel line.

Mike, That is perfect. Thank you so much for the image. I'll go ahead and say that this aircraft had the wires as I'm not finding any evidence to the contrary and I like the look. Googling only found one image with the aircraft in the background and you can't tell if the wires are present. I'm going to drill the pilot holes in the wing before I move any further on with the paint. Much appreciated.

Hiya. Yep, I'm here. Just sent you a message. For what it's worth, there's a space between the Gewehr and the 43. Either way, you should just be able to reply now. Really looking forward to the buffalo kit. It's not something I think I ever would have bought, but it nicely scratches an early pacific war itch that I'm on right now. I've contacted the recipient of my P-39 kit, and hope to ship it out this week. Thanks for organizing this, K2. Fun event for a great community!

Midday update! A little bit of time at the bench this morning means I was able to get a primer coat down. I started by painting the outside of the canopy interior green. I didn't mask the internals, so this will be a close approximation of the interior color when viewed from the inside. I've settled on this paint scheme from the 7th FS/49th FG in mid 1942. This is from the Montex mask set that I'll be using. Never used masks for insignia before, so this should be very interesting. Paint modulation starts now, so I deliberately mottled the primer coat. This is Mr. Surfacer 1500 black, thinned 1:1 w/Mr Color Self Leveling thinner shot at 15psi. Next, I'll paint the neutral gray bottom, mask out a few places and paint the OD top. Should be able to bang that out later tonight. Then it's on to masking and painting the markings. Question: I'm guessing this aircraft had the tail-to-each-wingtip aerial wire configuration, where do the radio wires attach to the wingtip? My googling isn't getting me far in this regard and I'd like to drill the appropriate holes before I get too far in the paint.

I then moved on to the part of the build I was dreading most. Joining the two clear panels aft of the cockpit and cleaning them up was a bit of a pain. For whatever reason, Hasegawa didn't put these on any kind of panel line (insofar as I can tell anyway), so cleanup is required. I'm glad I dipped these in future (this is why I did that, actually), as I had to use liquid superglue to lock these in place. The pre-glue setup. I did this to ensure that it aligned correctly with the rest of the rear fuselage. I then used a glue looper (an amazing tool - highly recommended!) to feed liquid superglue into the seams. After gluing, I cleaned up visible gaps, then shot a quick mist of gray primer to see how the seams looked. Using a bit of brush-applied Mr. Surfacer 500, I filled the remaining gaps. After quite a bit of sanding, some additional sanding, and rescribing, I believe I have the join smoothed out. It may not end up perfect, but it should be pretty close. So, that's where it currently stands. Next stop: Paint shop!

Content dump ahead... Boy oh boy, what a heck of a few days it's been. Stomach flu ravaged the house, canceled Christmas plans, ruined bathroom rugs, etc, etc, etc. In that time, I was so wasted, I only managed a few hours at the bench. Fortunately, I'm feeling much better today and should be able to press on. Here is a compendium of the things I was able to accomplish while half-withered from dehydration and nausea. Started gluing the wing roots. I used a small bit of sprue and tape to help press the lower wing root tighter into the fuselage piece. It helped the root fit more flush, but I still had to scrape and sand a bit for a smoother join. This shows the final product for the gun inserts on the wing. Pretty happy with how these came out. The process was greatly aided by the fact that all the nearby panel lines were far enough away from the sanding area so as not to need rescribing. Left wing root after cleanup. Right wing root after cleanup. Lower wing/fuselage join after cleanup and rescribe. I need some more scribing templates and tools. Some of the lines here had to be done by hand aren't quite as clean as I'd like. Though, once they're painted, I suspect any roughness will be all but invisible. The stabilizer join cleaned up, The upper surface joined flawlessly, but left a hairline gap in the lower surface join. I filled this with dissolved sprue, sanded, and lightly rescribed. On to the exhaust. These were finicky little SOBs so I taped them down to glue the halves together. Th end product looks pretty nice. Way better than dealing with drilling out solid tips, in my opinion. I cleaned up the seam lines a bit after these pictures, but as there was a visible weld line there on the real thing, I didn't go too nuts cleaning the join line.

Same. Keep an eye out for my build thread in the upcoming Multi Engine group build, as I'm going to be building exactly that airplane from the HKM -17E kit. I've got an early idea on how to tackle the remote belly turret issue using mostly kit parts, but I'll need all the advice and help I can get. Your thoughts and input would be welcome.

Thanks, everyone. Indeed, Bill. Guadalcanal will be one of those epic struggles whose legend endures for generations. Sadly, its memory is slowly fading these days.

You know, Trumpeter kicked my puppy one time too.

Edit: I'm deleting this comment because I realize in retrospect that it did not come off as I intended it to. I had intended for it to be light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek and it came off as whiny. Despite being in the tech field and relying on email as a primary form of communications, I sometimes forget that it is tough to derive tone from text. So, if I put anyone off by complaining about being sick, please disregard.

Remember how I said this kit looked like it had been bashed around a bit? Much better. The offending nubbies have since been removed. Tail wheel bay has been installed. Dipped the clear parts in Future. Mocked up the wheels and prop. Now she's really starting to look like a P-40. The gun inserts are almost ready. I had to fill a couple small spots last night and the dissolved putty takes a bit to dry. That's the last bit I wanted to address before gluing the wings on. That should be done today.

More progress last night. Not too much in the way of big advancements, but progress is progress. I spent most of the evening sanding things like leading edges, fuse seams, etc. I added the inserts for the guns on the leading edges as well as the inserts for the exhaust stacks. I've still got some more cleaning to do tonight, but should be able to make some more progress. The wings, sadly, did not get attached as I'd hoped. I have some cleanup around the root on the leading edges that I want to do before gluing a fuselage in the way. Tonight I also plan to dip the clear parts in future. I don't normally do that as I've had bad luck with it, but that clear piece over the area behind the cockpit will no doubt need some filling and sanding and I want to be able to use superglue if needed. Anyway, last night's work: Cowl inserts and cleanup done on the extraneous access panels. Both sides turned out fairly well. Still some more cleanup to do around the cowl inserts and the leading edge piece of the air intake. They were just added last night, so the glue hadn't fully dried. Cleaned up the seam in this... thingy... pretty nicely. Left gun insert. Fit on these was okay. Some filler will likely be required as you couldn't make both the top and bottom flush with the wing. One side would be flush and the other would have a little bit of a gap. C'est la vie, I suppose. Only did some rough-in work here as the glue wasn't fully set yet. I'll clean it up more tonight. Right gun insert. This gives you a feel for what the fit was like before any sanding. Fortunately, there are not any major panel lines anywhere too close by. Final mockup in its current state. Wings and tail surfaces still dry fit. I also sanded the primer (Mr. Surfacer) tail join a bit to smooth it out. It's not absolutely perfect, but the join should be pretty invisible with a coat of primer and paint.

Here's the overall status as of last night. The upper & lower wings are glued, as are the halves of the horizontal stabilizers and rudder. The wings, stabs, and rudder are all just dry fit at this point. Hopefully I'll shore up the wing tonight and finish the fuselage seam cleanup & whatever rescribing needs to be done. The panel directly behind the cockpit is glued together (crap fit) but is dry fit to the fuselage.

Progress! I had a little bit of time at the bench last night, so here's an update. I've got a couple things going for me when it comes to trying to complete this build by the end of the year. First, the holidays. Second, this kit fits really well. Third, the panel lines tend to run parallel to the mold lines, so a minimal amount of rescribing will be required. And, fourth, I won't be attaching any external stores because the mounting gear for them is all broken on the sprue. It looks, despite the box being in pristine condition and being ordered new, like this kit took a beating at some point in its life. Several parts are either broken off the sprue, broken on the sprue, or both. :/ Fortunately, it doesn't look like there are any real show-stoppers, so hopefully things will continue to progress well. On to the update: The instructions call to fill 5 extraneous inspection/access panels on the cowl, so I used my favorite putty - sprue dissolved in Tamiya extra thin cement. The tape is there to protect the molded on details. You'll see this same method used to fill a few spots in the fuse seams as well as the panel directly behind the pilot's seat. Goop. The most egregious damage I've found so far: Persevering with the wing spar box and landing gear wells. The spar was pretty warped and the cutouts for the well boxes are both shallow and oversized. So, it took a bit of securing to ensure both gear wells came out reasonably square. In the end, not perfect, but pretty close. With the upper & lower wings taped together, this is the root gap we are presented with. Pretty nasty. So, I'll use a trick I found here about using a small bit of sprue to spread the fuselage slightly. Much better...