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'The Swoose II' B-17G-30-BO 772 BS / 463rd Bomb Group The name Swoose originated from a B-17D that was one of 19 out of 35 Fortresses in the Philippine Islands that survived ground attacks from Japanese forces on the 8th Dec '41 shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbour. It was given it's name by Captain Weldon Smith following repairs undertook in Australia in January 1942 where the tail of another aircraft was grafted on, the name being derived from 'Half swan, half goose' inspired by a song at the time called 'Alexander the Swoose' about such a bird! The aircraft was later flown by Captain Frank Kurtz choosing the aircraft as a personal transport for General George Brett. Later in 1944, Kurtz commanded the 463rd BG in Italy as part of the 15th AF and had a B-17G named after after his earlier aircraft, Christened by his wife 'Swoose II' shown in the photo above. It survived the war and was eventually salvaged in May '45 despite a few scrapes along the way. When I heard that HKM were releasing this in 48th scale, I had to get my hands on one. I had been planning to build the Monogram one, but kept stalling because of the work that would need to be involved to get it to a decent finish although the shape is very good. The HK kit goes together very well and the nose shape was corrected following the evident inaccuracies of the 1/32 kit. The only major issue in my opinion is engines being about 3mm too high, but I decided to leave as they are to prevent ruining surface detailing. It's been a pleasure to build and has plenty of detail straight from the box. As with most builds, I try something new. This was the first model I've painted with the MRP paints which are a delight to use although due to not being happy with the shades used, I ended up going over it with a mix of Tamiya paints - mainly khaki lightened with some white. Another step forwards was a rather heavy weathering approach, particularly on the under surfaces where photo's show a lot of mud splatter. I used a toothbrush at the suggestion from @Josip and following reference pics from @Rakovica. The build can be seen here Anyway, here's the finished result. I appreciate some don't like excessive weathering, but I've tried to replicate what I've seen on photo's of weathered B-17's. Cheers Neil