The Little World

Never ever throw away the extra parts that accumulate as you build your kits. Save them, separate them, and catalogue them if you have time. At least have a good look in the boxes occasionally to remind yourself what you have. Remember modellers have a seventh sense that other people do not have – the ability to see useful shapes in unrelated objects.

In the case of the Beech AT-11 ” Kansan ” I found internet references to it used as a bombing and gunnery trainer with the USAAF. A book on the Norden bomb sight specifically lists the AT-11’s that were equipped with it. There are a number of these planes still in the air on the show circuit and one has been decked out with small bomb racks and an upper turret  – as it would have been in the advanced training mode.

The upper turret was of several types; a big blown perspex teardrop or a standard two-gun turret. In either case it was sometimes attached directly to the dorsal surface of the fuselage and sometimes faired in. The shape of the fairing seen in some Google pictures rang a bell and started me off for the spares boxes.

Sure enough, I had a spare fairing that was intended to cuddle a turret on a late Lancaster – I’d built that as an RCAF rescue plane with no turret up top – the fairing was sitting in the spares. A turret from the bottom of a Liberator with the guns in place completed the idea. And it fit with only minor reshaping or sanding.

To help the impression I then scored bomb bay doors in the ventral surface between the wings…my first major scribing job.

The Turkish decals set down well over the Mr. Color metallic and depending on how you light it, you don’t really need to weather it. I couldn’t bear that anyway as this depicts a show plane.

The close-up is cruel to a cheap plane but I wish to state proudly that it has a spare Norden in the bombardier’s position.

Never throw anything away…