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Monogram B-29 Enola Gay atomic bomb queston


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Last year, my family and I visited my old childhood home of northern Virginia.  We went to see the Enola Gay at the Air & Space Museum annex and now my 15 year old daughter, who is big into history, would like me to build her a model of the Enola Gay.  I have the 1/48 Monogram kit which I'll hopefully be starting in the next week or two.  Can the kit be built with either of the two atomic bombs slung up in the bomb bays?  Also, in real life, were the bombs carried in the front or the rear bomb bay?  On a side note, I also plan to cover the entire model with foil.  I think I might be a masochist.

 

Thanks!

 

Eric

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The bombs were carried in the forward bomb bay.  I'm not sure what was in the aft bays..I assume either instrumentation and electronics, or possibly extra fuel tanks.

 

SN

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Unfortunately, the Monogram kit does not include the appropriate bomb cradle that was installed in the front bomb bay to hold the gadget during flight.  Monogram provided a cart so that you could display the bomb next to the model.   You can just see some of the tubular cradle above the bomb in these pictures.  Fortunately it isn't very complicated and you could pretty easily scratchbuild it with some Evergreen styrene rod.  Alternatively you could just cut an appropriately long piece of sprue and just glue the top of the bomb to the bottom of the communications tube at the top of the bomb bay.  You'd probably never see it and wouldn't know the difference.

 

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battle_hiroshima267.jpg

 

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Front_bomb_bay_looking_forward.jpg

 

 

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Wow!  Thank you for the responses and for the pictures!  Cameron, I was thinking the exact same thing that you had mentioned:  I was thinking of just doing some "creative engineering" to afix the bomb to the ceiling of the bomb bay or to the crew tube.  

 

Again, the pictures are excellent.  Thank you!

 

Eric

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On 3/15/2019 at 2:15 PM, Slartibartfast said:

And, of course, Enola Gay only flew Little Boy.  Bock's Car dropped Fat Man.

This was a head-smacker for me.  LOL!  I got so tunnel-visioned on thinking how I would depict the bomb in the bomb bay that I stopped thinking about WHICH bomb would be the correct one to use.  Thanks for the reminder, Slart!

 

Eric

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On 3/15/2019 at 1:15 PM, Slartibartfast said:

And, of course, Enola Gay only flew Little Boy.  Bock's Car dropped Fat Man.

 

The OP stated he wanted to build a model of Enola Gay.  So I posted photos of the bomb cradle from the Enola Gay.

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