I had intended this to be a final part at part 4, a nice round number and all, but I’m waiting for some small parts, and some other components were not quite done. So consider this the beginning of the end!
There are some nice parts that have finally come together, so I’ll briefly run those down today. Then next week we’ll talk final decals (and maybe paint), interior parts, nose art, and building a pilot!
Let’s start with that paint, though. Thanks to some thoughtful input, I was in slightly less of a hurry to change its deco than I was last week. Mostly, you folks were able to convince me that there really isn’t a bad paint scheme among them.
From the decals I currently had available, I was able to make fairly legitimate Ninth Air Force livery, distinguished by the British style tail flash (the three color bars) and the white high unit markings. That would put this plane in Tunisia, Corsica, or eventually Southern Italy, any time between 1943 and the end of the war.
That’s not bad at all, but I’m still mulling over adding some (or all) olive drab to bring in more of that classic “army” look I was initially avoiding. Still, I went ahead and finished the weathering, focusing on the wings and fuel ports in particular. I actually ended up taking some rubbing alcohol and thinning my initial coats, and now the look is more even.
The armament, on the other hand, is done and settled. I worked out a flex mount for a .30 gun.
I used the very well-done McFarlane Terminator browning, and basically made a ball-socket joint that could fit over the barrel shroud. I put the ball — some kind of Xevoz or Bionicle or something — on the shroud, and I fitted a tapered washer into the mounting plate, just by drilling a sized hole. A second washer on the outside holds the barrel in place and allows for removal or extension. A fifth .50 also made its way into the nose, in a fairly accurate position. I’ll talk more about the interior work with that gun next time.
And in a moment of just dumb “Aha!”, I got my damn turret to work.
This Beast Bomber owes most of its style specifically to a B-25J, and the top turret is a major feature of that model. The problem has been that the bubble I came up with fit so well, and stayed removable, that I was having a real tough time besting it. Initially, I was going to just glue machine gun barrels to the outside of the bubble, but that isn’t the way I like to build. It would be flimsy, it would not have any interior detail, and it would make the turret non-removable, since any flexing of it would easily break those barrels off.
So I experimented with mounting them like the real thing — inside the turret, poking through. I shortened a pair of those RC machine guns, and started working them inside the bubble. To get a close alignment, and allow the bubble to traverse, as well as stick a figure under it, I started trimming angles off the guns to match the curvature of the dome. Then, to secure them in place, I added two small screws to the back of the receivers through the bubble. For the barrels, I used a similar technique to the real thing, and make rubber and cloth boots to fill in the space between the dome and the barrel. Because they are not mounted to the holes, this means I can still flex the bubble to remove it, and since the guns are affixed securely, they won’t go out of alignment. It was beautifully simple, despite how complex it sounds, and the look approximates a Bendix turret pretty well.
I haven’t really talked about the landing gear since the beginning, but I should mention that the real B-25 has a slightly different configuration — the rear wheels retract into the engine pods, not the body. While I would’ve liked to do this, the base had them in the same position they are now, and they hold the weight of the plane really well.
And on those engine pods — I hadn’t really given much thought to the exhaust spikes on the rear of the engines, but as more of the plane began to resemble the real thing, I realized they had to go.
After trying and failing with lots of parts, I used the ass-ends of the Bespin Cloud car. I literally just chopped them at the end and fit them in the holes, and they fill the cavities damn near perfectly.
And the carry handle has demonstrated its worth, as I test out the Beast’s final destination — strafing my messy workbench. See you next week, when I think we can put this one to bed.
