The Little World

With three good choices for a scheme, it was only the toss of a coin that painted this bomber high speed silver.

The paint itself is the good old French silver grey melange now topped up with more fresh silver for a shinier finish. One of the extant B-57 aircraft at a museum in the USA has just this sort of low glow to it.

The actual painting was a breeze, as I opted to use the single-action gun that normally sprays the undercoats and varnishes. The whole plane was an overall silver, so I thought to use the broadest fan available to coat it. No gloss was needed to prepare it for decals.

But the decals had been aged in the wood to the point where they had lost their adhesive power. Fortunately I detected this with the first USAF roundel on the under starboard wing and was able to remove it before it made a mess of the whole thing.

Also fortunate was the fact that I had an old set of USAF insignia left over from a B-66 kit, and with a little judicious juggling they replaced the Italeri ones perfectly. Even the serial numbers were in the right ballpark.

This early VNW scheme is attested by several sources and there are photos of the aircraft in the original setting. Mine’s cleaner, but that’s the way I like them.

Now to locate a New Zealand Canberra and an RAAF one – I suspect the Airfix kits will be the best option for this.

One final note: The wing-walk lines are not painted or decalled – they are from a roll of self-adhesive tape used for graphic design layup work. Why I had one is a mystery, but a good one.