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1/32 HK B-25J Shanghai Lil - 379th Bomb Squadron


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Well here goes, my first WIP on ARC and proof that I actually do build stuff. Sometimes.

Anyway this is the HK Model B-25J. First impressions are that the kit is awesome. Surface detail is near perfect, parts are well detailed, and it just looks great. Second impression is that some things could be improved.

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We have:

HK B-25J (of course)

Profimodeller cockpit, nose gun, top turret, tail turret, waist guns, bomb bay, motor details, outer (outher?) details, antenna, paint masks, canopy masks, special end Brownings (guns with the exhaust deflectors fitted) and nose weight

Eduard cockpit interior (SA), pilot seats, bomb bay, front interior (SA), fuselage interior, exterior, ammo belts, and TBM engine set (x2, picked up before I got the exterior set which also has engine details), Brassin B-25 wheels

G-Factor landing gear

AMS Resin props and governors

Loon Models props

HGW seatbelts + seat

Fine Molds WWII US aircraft seatbelts

AMS Resin gunpods & antenna

Barracudacals P-51D cockpit stencils & placards (hey, they're both North American planes)

Airscale WW2 USAAF instrument dials

Airscale cockpit instrument bezels

Airscale WW2 Allied cockpit placards

Greymatter Norden Bombsight

Master Browning .50 cal barrels(x8)

Aber Browning .50 cal barrels(x8)

Vector Browning .50 cal (x8) (not used)

CMK M2 Browning set (not used)

Aires Browning M2 .50 cal waist mounted set

Aires Browning M2 .50 cal wing mounted set

Vector Browning .30 cal (x4, for the sights)

CMK WWII 1000 lb GP bomb set

True Details 1000 lb GP bomb (x4)

Archer Hamilton Standard prop logos

Kits World B-25 General Stenciling - Stars & bars

MV lenses

Okay, on to the important stuff. They aircraft I'm building is a B-25J-1 s/n 43-4048. The aircraft was sent to the 379th Bomb Squadron, 310th Bomb Group on Corsica in early 1944. The first pilot named it Shanghai Lil, after the Dragon Lady character from Terry and the Pirates. The aircraft racked up well over 100 missions between April 1944 and April 1945. It was lost on 9 April 1945 during a raid in Italy. The short story is that the second bomb element overtook the first element and dropped cluster bombs on the first element bombers. The only plane seriously hit was Shanghai Lil. She was hit with eight 25 lb frag bombs. One of them went off shredding the fuselage around the top turret. The radio operator/gunner, Sgt George Jollie, survived but lost a leg. The pilot, Lt Bill Poole, managed to bring the crippled bird back to base and land it with no further injury to the crew. Sgt Jollie recovered in hospital where he met a very nice nurse whom he later married. It was Bill Poole’s 69th mission, just one away from completing his tour. His 70th mission went without incident. For the long story see the Osprey book "B-25 Mitchell Units of the MTO," or "There I Was... The Wartime Memoirs of a Fledgling Birdman" by Robert S Crouse. Or if you're very lucky you can talk to Bill about it himself.

Now for the build. I NEED feedback on this one. I move at a glacial pace and I've never done a WIP before so bear with me. I'll try to post something daily. Constructive criticism, destructive criticism, feedback of any kind is greatly appreciated. I really want to get this build right. So, if you see me doing something wrong, PLEASE let me know.

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Staring with step 1: the top turret. Both the Eduard fuselage interor set and the Profi top turret set have parts for this step.

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On the turret pedestal I added a missing beveled edge to the top of the box which houses the firing handles.

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Also decided the seat didn't look like the pics I had.

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Better.

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This is the gunners headrest. There should be three lightening holes in the curved part and the straighter part of the curve should be very thin sheet metal with a lip top and bottom. Eduard would have you place an etch piece with the lightening holes over the curve. That still leaves thick plastic, no lips, and no actual holes. Profi include a long etch part with holes. They would have you remove the entire portion of curved plastic and use the etch. This leaves no real lip.

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So we file down the "height" of the profi part and hack the middle out of it. We also use a needle file to take out most of the plastic leaving only the lips.

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I think that looks better. Blend the sides a little with some putty and it will be fine.

Eduard and Profi both have parts for the gunners footrest/gun charging steps. The Eduard supports are more accurate being U-channels where Profi uses round plastic rod. The actual foot plates though (the horizontal parts) are much more accurate in the Profi set. They also seemed pretty tough because I had to heavily anneal the Profi parts. Not so the Eduard set.

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Eduard structure with Profi foot-step. I think this is pretty good.

Also very time consuming because I'm done for the night. More to come tomorrow.

PLEASE let me know throughout if you notice ANYTHING I can improve on. Except picture quality. I'm sorry but that's the only camera I've got. ;)

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TITAN!!!!!

so what are you selling???

LOL!!!

Glad to see such and intricate build and all those AM parts! Gonna be more fun than finding that long lost C-130 kit I had when I was a kid, and purchasing it from you!!

-Jim

Ha! Not much for sale at the moment, although at the end of this build I may have a bunch B-25 references for sale. :D

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Well so much for daily updates. I have managed to get a little work done though.

The floor of the turret area is very plain. Eduard helps out here. They also include some nice detail for the entry hatch well.

IMG_3986_zps3eb00f3f.jpg

Notice the details on the sides of the hole for the hatch. If you just add the eduard parts to the stock kit part then you have plastic right behind the oval holes and cutouts. On the real thing the cutouts are open.

So instead we chop up the kit part

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Install the eduard part

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What the...? You may (or may not) be able to tell that the etch part doesn't fit. It's too narrow and too long. Now what to do?

Oh wait, the B-25 has two of these hatches, one fore and one aft and they're not the same size. I wonder if... yep, Eduard switched up the part numbers. The ones labeled for the forward hatch are actually the rear parts and vice versa.

Okay heart attack averted. Bend the new parts to shape, quickly fabricate some detail out of plastic strip to replace a piece of PE I damaged (oops), and install. Once the photoetch was installed I boxed off the lower area with some plastic strip. This gives the area some added depth over simply installing the PE on top of the plastic.

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Like so.

Will post more pics soon.

Matt

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  • 3 weeks later...

A short update for now. I re-shaped the gunner's seat again.

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The seat is supported by a folding structure and two conical springs. The Profimodeler turret set includes some resin parts for the springs however, they don't look like those found in most photos. They may be based on restorations but I'm not sure. Anyway, how to make the springs I want?

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Wrap some wire around the end of my MDC riveting tool...

Stretch to shape and viola!

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You can see the Profi part on the left. Doesn't look very spring-like although I've seen this shape on at least one restored B-25. However, the wire springs match better with contemporary manuals and some other B-25s.

I also scratch-built the folding support for the seat.

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Completed seat assembly.

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The cockpit floor is very bland.

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Eduard helps out quite a bit here.

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Note that I've removed the detail in the center to make room for the Eduard and Profi etch parts.

Also note that in order to get the Eduard peices to fit straight I had to make an undercut here on each side. Without that the Eduard parts would either sit too far forward or sit crooked.

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Taking a break from the interior for a bit. So let's talk about guns.

The kit guns are lacking. Very plain and in some cases even different sizes.

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I got guns from CMK, Aires, and Vector as potential replacements. Let's see how they compare.

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Right side, from top to bottom: CMK, Aires, Vector. The Aires gun has a separate top cover so it looks a little different.

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The real thing (sorry, not great a taking photos through glass display cases).

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Left side, from top to bottom: CMK, Aires, Vector. Note that the Aires gun is from the waist gun set and so has some extra detail around the area for the charging handle. The Aires wing gun sets (correctly) do not have this detail. Also, disregard the ragged edge on the bottom of the Aires part. That was operator error (my fault).

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The real thing (again, sorry for the poor quality)

You can see that Aires matches up nearly perfectly with the details of the real gun. Vector isn't bad but Aires is better. CMK is not close.

I'll definitely be using the Aires guns for this build. The waist gun set will be used for the waist and nose guns. The wing gun set will be used for the top and tail turret guns.

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Both types of Aires guns. Wing guns left and waist gun set right. Note the detail differences where the charging handle would be. The wing guns are ideal for turrets while the waist gun set is perfect for the flexible mounts in the waist and nose. Also the fixed nose gun because I've only got four wing guns and I need them all for the turrets. So I'll modify that one as necessary.

Of course the Aires guns aren't perfect...

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C'mon! Oh well, nothing a fresh xacto blade won't fix.

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Let’s look at the barrels. All the previously mentioned gun sets come with resin barrels. In my opinion brass barrels look much better in 1/32 scale. I picked up the .50 cal barrels by Master and Aber. Let’s see how they stack up.

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Master top, Aber bottom. They're both the same length and width. How to pick which ones to use?

Well, it initially came down to bore size. (Yes, I looked at that.)

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Aber, Master, and the real thing.

The Aber barrel is, I believe, slightly more accurate here. Unfortunately, Aber has a bit of a problem as I look closer.

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The circled portion should be flush with the end of the cooling jacket. Either the Aber jacket is too short or the barrel is too long. Either way, the end doesn't look like an M2.

However, if we put the master jacket on the Aber barrel...

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The Master jacket fits perfectly and the Aber barrel is no longer sticking out the wrong way. Is it enough of an improvement to justify buying both sets of barrels to make one gun? Probably not. I'd say pick one or the other. If you wanted you could fairly easily shorten the Aber barrel part or you could just live with the oversize bore of the Master barrel (because who’s going to look at that?) But if you happen to have both then you can get a better gun with the Master jacket and the Aber barrel.

You'll notice I didn't look at the Profi barrels. The reason is because they are all different lengths corresponding to the different and incorrect lengths of the kit barrels. The M2 only had one barrel length as used on the B-25. It's possible that the kit and Profi were only intending to show the portion of the barrels that are visible. For example, with the package guns, a large portion of the barrels are hidden under the package fairing so you only need to show the portion that sticks out of the fairing. For the tail guns part of the barrels may be obscured by the canvas cover. That kind of makes sense except that on the kit and Profi barrels, the hole pattern in the cooling jackets comes to an end before it should on the shorter barrels.

I did get one set of the Profi "special end" barrels. The special end is an exhaust deflector (often incorrectly noted as a flash suppressor) that was sometimes fitted to the package guns and the top turret guns. Shanghai Lil did not carry the package guns but did have the exhaust deflectors fitted to the upper turret guns. So those deflectors will be cut off of the Profi parts and installed on the Master/Aber barrels for the top turret.

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Btw, is Shanghai Lil marking provided in the kit or will it be AM sheet as well?

The markings will have to be custom. Fortunately it shouldn't be that difficult. The major distinguishing markings for Shanghai Lil were the aircraft name on the pilot's side of the nose, the crew names under the pilot's window, the mission markings, and the serial number. The group and squadron markings were a large yellow horizontal stripe on the vertical fin for the group and a smaller white stripe beneath it for the 379th bomb squadron. I'll mask and paint those. The serials should be fairly easy to source. The plane name, crew names, and mission markings I'm going to have to do myself. The only one that's got me a little worried is the crew names because those were in white. So I need to get hold of someone with an ALPS printer or find one myself. :blink:

There's a picture of Shanghai Lil here:

http://57thbombwing.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=62953

She's the olive plane in the back. Note the dark spots on the vertical fin. I believe those are battle damage repairs.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Progress!

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"But wait!" you say, "What about the build? The WIP?"

Well that's still to come. What you see are the major outside peices with not a lot on the inside. Most of the interior parts have yet to be done. I had a deadline come up and needed to have the model available. So I assembled the major components, some very basic interior items (seats, IP), painted and decaled it and there it is. And I think it looks pretty good. But I've still got a lot to do on this one, especially on the interior. And now with the added challenge of having already assembled this thing. Should be fun. Not your typical build method anyway...

On the subject of decals: I made my own using Testors decal paper. And I learned a lot while doing it. For example, make sure you read the instructions first so that you're not frantically applying a last-minute lacquer overcoat because you didn't know you were supposed to use a decal bonder that you didn't buy and you don't have time to use future. Also, just because it prints in color on clear decal paper doesn't mean the colors are gong to show up well on the model. Especially red and yellow on an olive background. That mis-calculation lead to some frantic scrounging and hand-painting to get the serial right.

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The A/C name. This will be re-done. It's supposed to be red but came out maroon. That's after a double application too. You can also see it's pretty thick, I believe that's due to the aforementioned lacquer. Up close it looks like the ink bled a little on the L's at the bottom too(reference the bit about decal bonder)although this isn't really that noticeable in person. And the G isn't quite right. Anyway, just a couple of the lessons learned.

More to come soon.

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What would be wrong with filling the Master barrel and drilling it to the correct size? You'd still have the complete Aber to use on something else or sell. Either way this is going to be a great build and I'll be following along.

You could do that. You could also cut a section out of the Aber interior barrel so that it matches the length of the cooling jacket. I think filling and re-drilling might be a little more difficult and you also have to consider that the Master barrels are still very nice just as they are. To be honest, either barrel will look much nicer than plastic parts.

With those aftermarket parts, this is sure to be a great Mitchell bomber model.

Thank you for the vote of confidence. Hope I can live up to it. :)

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