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Should have stayed at home Yesterday....


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For my next trick I am going to build the B-29 'Enola Gay' The aircraft that dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima.

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As you can see its the 1:72 Academy offering, I have started her already and so far the quite detailed cockpit is coming along nicely,

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James

Edited by RAF Colonel
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Well cliff someones got to bring in the fat lady to sign.... and to be frank I have a Choir of Fat Ladies!..... well the memphis belle is the exception as she's quite slim....

And for those wanting to see Bockscar and fat man done wait till the Pacific GB, when the two will "Fly" In formation

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

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Cockpits finished, The Crew Tunnel is drying and the crew bunks and rest area are all getting painted and should be finished tonight!

Then we just need to get Col Tibbets and his Cpt Lewis into there seats and I can seal them inside the monster! later I'll try and add the Bombardier... the cockpit wouldn't look the same without him sitting up front!

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The cockpit looking aft,

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Crew rest area.... I'll admit I wasn't as careful here as I was in the cockpit as this will all only be viewable through a pinhead sized window!

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Ohhhh Shinnnnnnnnnnnney!

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The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed the variation of greens used on the interior, thats because when I started this kit well over a year ago I didn't care for accuracy and just did the cockpit in Humbrol 78 however since the Bombay, bulkheads and crew tunnel are going to be visible though the open bomb bay doors Ive changed them to the proper color of army green.

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Great to see how much internal detailing comes with the kit (I love the crew tunnel).

Does the fuselage come looking shiney like that or have you developed a radical new approach to NMF, involving pre-assembly painting? :hmmm:

It's looking really good.

Cliff

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I couldn't Imagine trying to spray paint the beast when she was complete... as I am doing it with Humbrol No. 11 spraypaint.... however part of me tells me Ive wasted my time and money as even where I have carefully filed down the the sprue connection it still looks rough.... and there is not quick fix unfortunately, just going to have to live with it!

Really need to invest in an airbrush I think!

And pedrovski, if I remember rightly the bombardier on the Enola Gay had to manually arm little boy during the flight, imagine that standing in a really cold bomb-bay 30,000 feet over enemy territory with a highly volatile nuclear bomb at your fingertips and you've to arm it! wouldnt trade places with him for the world!

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And pedrovski, if I remember rightly the bombardier on the Enola Gay had to manually arm little boy during the flight, imagine that standing in a really cold bomb-bay 30,000 feet over enemy territory with a highly volatile nuclear bomb at your fingertips and you've to arm it! wouldnt trade places with him for the world!

"They never told me about this big red button... what would that do??"

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... a radical new approach to NMF, involving pre-assembly painting?

Cliff

I couldn't Imagine trying to spray paint the beast when she was complete... as I am doing it with Humbrol No. 11 spraypaint.... however part of me tells me Ive wasted my time and money as even where I have carefully filed down the the sprue connection it still looks rough.... and there is not quick fix unfortunately, just going to have to live with it!

We have stumbled on the same idea of pre assembly painting, albeit for different reasons. Is it messing with your head doing things in the 'wrong' order? It seems very odd to my ossified mind!

Your interior is very nice. Is your fuselage all glued together now? Please let us know how you solve the problem of repainting the join.

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  • 3 weeks later...
And pedrovski, if I remember rightly the bombardier on the Enola Gay had to manually arm little boy during the flight, imagine that standing in a really cold bomb-bay 30,000 feet over enemy territory with a highly volatile nuclear bomb at your fingertips and you've to arm it! wouldnt trade places with him for the world!

Major Thomas Ferebee, the bombardier on the mission did none of the above. The 4 cordite charges used to shoot the Uranium bullet down the gun within the weapon were loaded by Captain William 'Deke' Parsons USN (the senior Military officer on board and head of the ordnance department at Los Alamos which developed the gun type atomic bomb) and his assistant, 2nd Lt Morris Jeppson (also from the weapon development team) who started the procedure about 8 minutes after take off with the aircraft at low level. Final arming of the bomb's electrical firing system was done by Jeppson fitting 3 arming plugs on the outside of the bomb, at 07:30 just before the aircraft climbed from its cruising altitude of 9000 ft to the bombing altitude of 30,000 ft (about 200 miles from Japan). None of the crew bar Tibbets and the Los Alamos personnel on board really knew what they were carrying, but for the fact that it was a very powerful bomb and what its effects would be (during the briefing before the raid, the crew should have seen a film of the Trinity test, but the projector broke, so Parsons had described it on a blackboard). However, Tibbets did inform the crew of what the weapon was, after visiting the rear compartment to talk the crew in there on the outbound leg. While there the rear compartment crew quizzed Tibbets on what they were carrying, after guesses of 'A chemists nightmare' and 'a physicists nightmare' got a shake of his head, it was while he was starting his way down the tunnel that one of the crew ( Tech Sgt Bob Carson, the rear gunner, if memory serves) asked "Colonel, are we splitting atoms today???" at which point, Tibbets looked back, nodded, and replied "Yep, that's about the size of it". He then crawled down the tunnel back to the cockpit and informed the whole crew that they were carrying an atomic bomb. Your right about one thing however, the Mark 1 'Little Boy' Atomic bomb was a very volatile design which could cause a nuclear event (from release of large amounts of radiation to full yield detonation) due to any number of accidental reasons, hence the reason almost every nuclear weapon design since uses the "Fat Man" implosion method of getting a critical mass together (every detonator in the explosive around the fissile material has to fire at exactly the same time, or you will not get full yield on an implosion weapon, plus implosion is around 10 times more efficient converting the fissile material into energy than the gun method).

Little Boy is reckoned to have used around over 80Kg of Enriched Uranium, of around 1.3% of which actually fissioned, giving a yield of 12.5 Kilotonnes, Fat Man on the other had used around 15Kg of Plutonium of which 13% fissioned, resulting in a yield of over 20 Kilotonnes.

Nice work on the model by the way.

Edited by bigVern1966
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  • 5 weeks later...

Is mama proud of little boy today?

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Bombay and interior has also been stuck in,

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Theres a small ammount of glazing to be added then she's going to be sealed and her silver spray paint coat is going to be stripped and reapplied when she is complete... as I am having major issues with sanding and sealing other parts and it looks patchy and rather ugly

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Systems are not normal and the Gay has gone down in the Pacific sea....

The Crew,

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I went to take some better pictures this morning and see how she was doing and I noticed (How I didnt last night is beyond me) that the canopy had frosted over where I had used acetone free nail polish remover to remover some over sprayed paint.

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So I dont really know what to do now.... obviously I need to fix or replace the canopy, however I dont think I'll submit her... who ever heard of an unmarked B-29....

James

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Hi James

Sorry to hear about the frosting. Before you do anything too rash, have you tried a coat of Klear over the canopy? It can be really good at repairing even quite scarey surface damage to transparencies.

Worth a try!

Cliff

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Hi James

Before trying the Kleer, you might want to have a go with silver polish - I use (new recipe) Silvo. This is a low solvent, low odour, very fine grade polish that is easy to apply with a cotton bud. Just polish away in a circular motion until you achieve the desired result. This may take some time! Any residue may be washed away with water. Obviously, if the fogging has gone quite deep you may need to consider starting off with Micro Mesh or a very fine grade wet'n'dry paper (used wet).

Hope this helps

Andy

Edited by It'sAllGoneHorriblyWrong
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