1/48 Revell/Monogram "Special Edition" B-26 Marauder

[WymanV]

I've been accumulating B-26s for too long-it's time to knock one out. Actually, I picked up a pair of Hypercat resin cowls for one kit last week and I'm just a little inspired to build one.

 

 I actually have 2 of these kits:

 

 

 The first one came from someone who was looking for a Hasegawa Tomcat maybe 15 years ago? They were pretty cheap at my LHS (remember those?) and he was so happy with the price, he mailed me one of these as a bonus. The second one I believe I picked up at a now closed hobby shop in Reno on consignment for $24. 

 

 And there's a third. And another...

 

 Here we have one I picked up some years ago on ebay. I wanted an original release in the hopes the fit issues would be better, and also in this box is one from many many years ago I tore apart to rebuild.

 

 

 I'm tossing the old rebuild out. Building three of these is pushing it and the stash is too big and life's too short for such things.

 

 In this box is both of the Special Edition kits:

 

 Along with a Squadron vac canopy I forgot I had and an old Microscale decal sheet.

 

 So, what I think I'll do is use the green styrene with the resin bits to build Murder Inc., a B-26B-10-MA of the 449BS/322BG. The color plate in Aircraft of the Aces tells us it's an unusual early 3 tone scheme which appears to be OD (top) over a medium green (sides) with NG bottom. I'll look into the details about that as the build progresses.

 

 I have almost a full tube of filler and some 80 grit sandpaper so if I end up staying home this weekend, I may just get started on it.

 

 Ken

Edited July 19, 2018 by WymanV

[Don]

Nice! I never picked one of these kits up and I don't know why. I've always wanted to do "Flak Bait" but just never got around to grabbing one of these kits. I will certainly be following along. Good luck!

 

Regards

[RKic]

Hells to the yeah!!!! This is one of my favorite kits of all time! 

 

I'm so happy to see you bringing this one out!!

[Kurt H.]

One of the few monogram kits I have never owned. Welcome to the GB.

[phantom]

Nice!! Never seen that one.

[k5ikl]

I had two of those some time ago, now wish I hadn't sold them.  Oh woe is me.

Jerry

[bashace]

I started one of these at home before I came back to the Middle East for work, hopefully I'll be able to finish it next year.

[WymanV]

7 hours ago, bashace said:

I started one of these at home before I came back to the Middle East for work, hopefully I'll be able to finish it next year.

 

 And hopefully soon

 

 Spent a couple of days digging around those internets looking for info on this plane and found nothing! I found a few B&W pics of the nose art and a few pics of the tail in formation (the photographer was obviously taking pics of the plane behind her) but no history of the plane and no info whatsoever on the Mediterranean Patrol scheme. I threw the question up on hyperscale and if anyone out there knows about it, they'll likely be there.

 

 Meanwhile, the profile from Osprey's Aircraft of the Aces:

 

It would be something different for a Marauder if it proves to be a real thing.

 

 Ken

[WymanV]

 No trip this weekend so I got a start going here. My first step was to pre-paint everything that should/could be painted. That involved plenty of web research because the color call-outs in the instructions suggest everything is interior green and that's not the case in the B-26. The bomb bay is supposed to be Neutral Gray so I burned up some WEM Colourcoats NG that I had left over-their spin on NG is very dark and of course, I expect it will be dry by September or so. Wheel wells are aluminum so they got hit with some aluminum metallizer. Floors are supposed to be black. Sidewalls are a mixed bag of either aluminum or a rather oily looking green with a lot of OD colored padding. I'll go aluminum with this one-with the padding, not much will show anyway.

 

 Some pre-painting. The cockpit floor had to have the nose section from the kit cut off the original floor piece and glued on:

 

 And I started cleaning up the resin bits:

 

The sidewalls on the nose gear well might be warped, but the castings are pinhole free and really nice. The only top turret part that will come from the kit will be the clear hood-all the rest is resin.

 

 Meanwhile, the consensus is there was no "Mediterranean Patrol" scheme. However, there are some distinct anomalies in the early OD/NG painted Marauders. I suspect the Mediterranean Patrol notion was attributed to Murder Inc based on this pic:

 

 What is interesting is PN*Q doesn't have the "Marauder Wave" between the gray and the OD.

 

 The search continues. Meanwhile, back to it.

 

 Ken

[Whiskey]

Flak, lots of flak. It's not often one sees a decent picture of the vast amounts of anti-aircraft fire the Germans sent up at our guys, let alone with the aircraft you are planning to model.

[WymanV]

A technique I cooked up over the years to make resin sidewalls conform to the inside of the cockpit is to stick a piece of self adhesive sandpaper in place where the part needs to fit. Gently scrubbing it back and forth cuts the backside down nicely:

 

 Molded cockpit detail sanded away. As you can see, the resin doesn't extend all the way to the front so I had to leave some of the original details in there:

 

 And since the fuselage will take some time I got a start on the wings by gluing the halves together. I reverted to my youth a couple years ago and switched back to good ol' Testors orange tube glue for doing work like this. It gives me more work time, and I'm more certain of coverage on bigger pieces than I am with liquid cement:

 

 All the on-line builds state this kit has nacelle fit issues so while I wait for fuselage parts to dry I can work on these.

 

 Ken

 

 

 

Edited July 26, 2018 by WymanV
...stupid shift key...

[phantom]

Loos good.

[WymanV]

 Working on the fiddly bits. Here's a taste of the cowl fit issues:

 

  Something interesting I noticed is while profiles of the plane and the kit (in a very exaggerated fashion) shows a panel line that extends around the front of the cowl, photos I've been looking at show this to be quite minimal if not at all. That along with the fit issues with the carb opening scoops would be where all the legendary work arises in building these.

 

 Meanwhile, some paint work:

 

 I went with Floquil Reefer Yellow for the seat cushions and I opted for WEM/Colourcoats spin on Interior Green  as it has an "oily" look to it that Model Master didn't get with theirs.

 

 Next up; nacelle fit issues.

 

 Ken

[Don]

Very nice! You are making this old kit really shine. Interesting nose art too being "Murder Inc". If I remember correctly there was a B-17 crew with that name painted on their flight jackets. It was shot down and the German propaganda machine had a field day with those "Murder Inc" jackets and painting USAAF bomber crews as murderers and such. It got to the point that the USAAF made crews change aircraft names that had the word "Murder" in them... from "Murderous Witch" to "Mysterious Witch" is an example off the top of my head.

 

Great work again! I'll enjoy watching this build progress.

 

Regards

[RKic]

Did you see the article on Swanny Models about the cowls on this kit? 

[WymanV]

 Several times over the years-even back when the photo links worked. In fact, I've studied several on line builds on this kit. The ones that made an impact note that with thoughtful sanding the parts fit with a minimum of fuss.

 

 Note the cowls. The problem here is the scoop parts have the edge that mates with the larger part was molded with the outer edge squared with the edge of the scoop. This doesn't work when mating surfaces on a rounded part-there's a gap because the inner edge is the only point that makes contact:

 

 

The trick to making this work is to sand the inner edge down so the outside meets up with the part instead of the inner edge:

 

 

Voilà-it works. It'll take very little to clean these up other than the molded step that's supposed to represent a panel line (clearly visible on the part on the right).

 

 The same treatment works with the nacelles. The contacting edge on this one is way too thick-it makes the part sit high and there is a prominent step from the wing to the nacelle. Just sand it down and the fit issue goes away:

 

 

The nacelle part you're looking at was also warped, creating a gap that was close to 1/8" wide. A little hand manipulation of the part resolved the issue. Where it meets at the leading edge also had to be sanded to make the curve to the front work. Note also the oddly placed access panel chopped off by the nacelle. Not sure how this is supposed to be but it's easy enough to sand that bit of detail off the wing.

 

 Dry fitting and testing saves a lot of trouble later. The same could be said for a lot of the old Monogram kits, particularly the bombers.

 

 Ken

[bashace]

You did a great job on those cowls! I can feel the anxiety building up thinking about messing with those on the kit I was building, in fact, that's probably where I put it back in the box for later...lol!

[WymanV]

 I usually find it easier knowing when I go into a build that it'll be a PITA because in the end, it's not usually as bad as all that 😉

 

 I've taken to bringing fiddly chores like this to work and slam them out while I'm on break. Wiles the time away and gets stuff done. Knocked this one out yesterday:

 

 

Still a gap to fix at the very top of the opening but a little fine tuning and it should be good. And as I suspected, better looking than the resin ones, which fortunately came with engine faces that are nicer than the kit's.

 

 Ken (yes, also decaling a Mustang)

[WymanV]

 Took a little effort to seal the nacelle up:

 

Ken

[Don]

Taking many notes. Nice work!

Regards,

Don

[nspreitler]

Nice work and very good problem solving.  I have a couple of these in the stash, I started the Special Edition version years ago but didn't get very far.  

[WymanV]

 I had been saving the foil off the top of Martinelli's Sparkling Cider bottles over the years thinking I might be able to use it in scale modeling. And I found the use:

 

It has a rather unique diamond pattern to it so I painted a piece of it Field Drab and used it to replicate the padding that is all over the interior of B-26s. While it's certainly not to scale, once it's buttoned up it sure looks the part.

 

 Trying to fit the resin nose wheel bay and once I get that figured out I should be able to glue up the fuselage halves.

 

 Ken

[Lost_Erik]

Your painted details look fantastic, Ken.

[WymanV]

Thank ye, sir 😉

 

 Hammerin' away. Here's the issue with the resin nose wheel bay:

 

 

 Along with being just a hair short, the side walls are warped. And it's too deep. It bottoms out on the bottom of the resin cockpit floor and I sanded the bottoms of both parts as thin as I dared. There are access doors behind the crew seats that are supposed to line up with the doors seen on the top of the wheel well in this pic and the cockpit floor is so thin, those doors are transparent. And so is the back of the wheel well (in fact, I sanded through in one corner...). The two components will be such a tight fit I won't even think of gluing the cockpit into the kit-I take a chance of missing the alignment and I really don't want to tear it apart a half dozen times to get it right. What I'll probably end up doing here is making spreader bars out of sprue to push out the wheel well sides and when the fuselage is buttoned up, glue the bottom edge to the inner fuselage. Even with the gap you see taken out of the fuselage halves the side walls are exposed like you see on the right side.

 

 Slugging it out with the nacelles as well:

 

 As advertised on most on-line builds I've read the tail cone was a pretty horrific fit. There was a large and uneven gap on the bottom. I filled the worst of it with .30 x .40 styrene and the rest with putty. That resin bulkhead in the front of the well makes quite a difference compared to the open hole Revell left.

 

 Note also-resin engines. These came with the resin cowls I got and while I decided to go with the kit cowls (they cleaned up better than I thought they would), I was hoping to use the resin engines that came with them. No dice. You can see how much bigger they are than the kit ones. Even if I sanded the backplate completely off the resin parts the engines are simply too big to fit in the kit cowls.

 

 Plodding along but it's gettin' there.

 

 Ken

 

 

Edited August 9, 2018 by WymanV
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[WymanV]

While the Mustang and the Devastator are nearly done, this build still muddles along.

 Here's a look at the tail cone gap on the other wing:

 

It has since joined the other wing in being filled with strip styrene and putty and sanded down and primed and sanded down.

 

 Finished up the turret today:

 

 

Other than the black center post, it's not a vast improvement on the kit parts. What was really disappointing was the guns. One side of the gun was cast to the block so of course, there is no detail on half of the breech. Hopefully it sits deep enough in the fuselage that nobody will notice. The bits of ammo belt is from the Verlinden B-17G resin set, and another item I cannot recommend as half of the parts in the set are fictitious.

 

 Off on a sidetrip tomorrow that might prove beneficial to this build. Meanwhile, since the other projects on the bench are wrapping up, that big exhaust stub in the bottom of the pics is a sign of things to come...

 

 Ken