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Before Lewis Lynch served as a Navy Medic in San Francisco, caring for wounded arriving from the Pacific Theater, he worked at the Martin Aircraft Plant in Omaha, Nebraska... He grew up in the Sand Hills of Nebraska and to survive the deprivations of the Great Depression, he and several members of his family migrated to Omaha to scratch out a living in the Martin factory... It was at the Martin facility in Omaha that the B26C Marauder was assembled and later the B29 Superfortress... Lewis was involved in B26C builds... In March 2015, Lewis Lynch will turn 93, and as celebration of his birthday, my 15 year old son Parker and I will assemble a Hasegawa 1/72 B26C and hang it from his ceiling in his home. Lewis Lynch is my son's grandfather... Just below is an archival image of a B25C exiting the assembly plant in Omaha: This will be a straight OOB and clean (I hope) build. Since Lewis only saw brand new versions of the B26C, we do not plan on weathering the plane at all. Here's the Hasegawa kit box and cover art: Not quite as overwhelming as a 1/32 scale Tamiya Superkit, but enough to keep us busy for a while. I've not built a 1/72 scale aircraft since a completely hand-painted Japanese Zero in 1961 and am far more used to working with 1/32 scale, so this will be a different experience. Here's a shot of the kit's contents: This afternoon Parker and I assembled the cockpit and bomb bay... I was actually astonished how quickly this portion of the build went, which is an attribute of the 1/72 scale... Since each of these subassemblies are a single color (mostly Zinc Chromate), we put them together and then I'll airbrush the paint on... here are the initial assemblies: Here is my build partner: And finally, here is the aforementioned Lewis Lynch taken back during the days of WWII: Here is Lewis in a more recent photograph: