The Little World

I am not going to assign a position to Unloved in the various waves of USAAF bombers that hit Ploesti in Romania. There are scholarly books that can report on every ship and crew that made the raid.

I am just satisfied that it has most of the salient features of that early B-24 model – smooth nose, full turret complement, and the composite Allied markings used in the Mediterranean.

I was unsure of the exact Desert Pink to use but in the end a brilliant stroke of serendipity found an old bottle of Mr Hobby aqueous flesh colour unused at the back of he paint box. It would probably have made a hideous colour for human skin – and I rarely paint figures in any case – but it is perfect for Libyan-based aircraft.

I have rarely had a paint spray on so well – it was over a standard grey Mr Surfacer 1000, and the paint has sunk into the panel lines ever so slightly – accentuating them without need for special washes.

The markings are pure USAAF and it’s interesting to see that a mixture of schemes flew on the Romanian raids – I have period pictures of drab 24’s with plain Army stars, stars with yellow outlines, and white-panel wings, as well as similar variants on the desert-scheme ships. And the wing stars on some are both sides – on others only on port upper and starboard under.

The nose art is purely mine. The lack of nose gear doors is authentic to early aircraft where the doors retracted up into the fuselage when the gear was out.

I now have a British B-24, an American one, and I am looking out for an Eduard kit of a marine-patrol Canadian version with chin radar. One can never have enough B-24’s.