The Little World

Now all I need to do is keep the blasted windows on this airplane in the same condition – and Airfix have been either brilliantly helpful or blithering idiots – I will find out later.

I’m used to the canopies and cockpit covers of model aircraft being of varying quality – from the horrible Mach 2 to the wonderful Mister Craft and all stations in between. The clear parts on this Airfix Fortress are quite so, and seem to fit very precisely into the cutouts on the fuselage – all to the good. The cockpit cover masks up nicely and I anticipate no trouble with it. Even the large clear window at the rear of the  crew quarters is good – though it will need liquid mask to cope with the curvatures.

However, Airfix in their wisdom have seen fit to include clear parts for two cheek pieces in the nose of the ship and the entire aft gunner’s position. You mask ’em, fix ’em and paint ’em or fix ’em, mask ’em, and paint ’em. But you don’t do it easily and you don’t find out whether you’ve made a hash of it until very much later in the process.

I think I managed the interior green on the pieces reasonably well – freehanding them this morning at the club. And I was a very careful glue artist with them as well – but the masking of glass and guns will be a delicate proposition. I am considering doing the tail separate from the fuselage and just accepting a glue line under the paint job at the tail – it is satin black anyway. That way I will not be shattering the twin .50’s as I try to assemble it.

Note: The top turret can be made outside the aircraft and inserted as a last touch – perfect. The nose glazing likewise, and I may not mount the machine guns there at all. But the business of putting defensive armament on bombers when you know you’re going to handle the model during decaling and painting needs a bit of thinking out.

I discovered this while working on the Consolidated Liberator B. VI. The top turret could be added like that of the Fortress, and came out well. The nose and tail units, however, were tougher to deal with realistically and in future I will be modifying this sort of Bendix turret so that it too can be the last thing mounted. I don’t need the guns to swivel, but I do need them to be intact. The same may well apply to British bombers like the Stirling or Lancaster.