The Little World

And full of high explosives? Why Strawberry Bitch, of course.

Not a popular airplane in Romania, though it did visit there some years ago. Not that it hung around – just popped in, dropped something off, and popped out again. Sort of like a pastel-coloured courier van. No-one signed for the parcels…

The real SB is on show in Ohio at the Dayton museum of military aircraft. The pictures available on the net show it to be a dead-set ringer for this one at Sandown Park. I wonder if the USAAF knew what was going to be on show and painted theirs to match.

I was particularly taken with the dead-flat finish and the subtle variations in colour that were worked into the panels to help distinguish them. I have not tried service weathering yet, but this result makes it very tempting. The early variant of the B-24 with the smooth nose – perfectly accurate for the Ploesti raid – is a refreshing change from the D models with the front turret. I’ll bet the pilots liked the D better, though, if someone was flying toward them firing machine guns.

And note that the B-24 builder has accurately predicted what the plane would do once completed, and taken proper precautions. The owner of this Privateer may not have – how embarrassment…