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B-17 Memphis Belle Old Revell 1/48


Tcoat

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27 minutes ago, Mancunian airman said:

Excellent build I must say . . .  flak damage looks convincing 👍

I wanted to convey the damage as seen in the movie but not get carried away to the point the model would break in half if you tried to pick it up. Studied 100s of pictures of the real thing and although some of them made it home with massive sections of aircraft missing I wasn't so sure a model would survive it!

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34 minutes ago, noelh said:

Memphis Belle is such an icon, almost a personality. You've depicted her wounded. 

 

That is brilliant. 

I am working on an airfield base for it. I have a lone figure that I am going to have standing beside a staff car just looking at the aircraft. I think it will be rather poignant.

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1 hour ago, Johnny Tip said:

Why does it still have its ball turret? better wear your seatbelt Sam Gamgee... :D 

Great build!

Why wouldn't it?

I was really torn on how to finish it since there are really three different ways you can go.

There is the actual historical aircraft that had the ugly (and totally ineffective) medium green "camo" blotches over the faded light olive drab. It had a replacement vertical stabilizer and rudder after a prop strike that looks to be darker olive drab with lighter fabric.

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There is the movie version that was pristine dark olive drab over the whole surface. Well at least at the start of the movie it did. By the end of the movie it had sustained all the damage in it's last mission that it did in the whole of it's real operational period. 

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Or there is the restored version that sort of falls someplace in between the two others so includes elements of each.

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I am/was building this to give away to a friend (I give away about half of what I build these days) that is a huge fan of the movie so I modeled it primarily based on that even though it is probably the furthest from the real operational aircraft. 

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Edited by Tcoat
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On 25/02/2021 at 14:15, Tcoat said:

Why wouldn't it?

because IIRC, it gets somehow shot off on the return journey, and Eric Stoltz' character has to pull the ball turret gunner (there was a poem about him?) inside. Just a silly joke, no criticism on your beautiful model.

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3 minutes ago, Johnny Tip said:

because IIRC, it gets somehow shot off on the return journey, and Eric Stoltz' character has to pull the ball turret gunner (there was a poem about him?) inside. Just a silly joke, no criticism on your beautiful model.

Oh I didn't take it as a criticism but was truly curious as to why there wouldn't be one.  

I have never seen the movie myself and rarely watch war movies at all. I usually just end up yelling at the screen when things get totally absurd. 

Don't even get me started on that Brad Pitt Fury movie which should have been about 5 minutes long after the take broke down! 

Tank broke.

German column coming.

Panzerfuast explosion.

Roll credits.

 

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On 2/25/2021 at 7:15 AM, Tcoat said:

It had a replacement vertical stabilizer

Not necessarily so! A common trait on camouflaged B-15's is that the center section of the vertical stabilizer was manufactured and painted  separately and almost never matched the paint that was applied to the rest of the airplane; it almost always was darker that the surrounding paint. I have also read that the subcontractor that supplied that section used medium green 42 in error- this would definitely account for a different appearance in a b&w photo.  @Dana Bell would know, I'm betting. That being said, that is a very well-done model and the diorama is going to make it even better!

Mike

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3 hours ago, 72modeler said:

Not necessarily so! A common trait on camouflaged B-15's is that the center section of the vertical stabilizer was manufactured and painted  separately and almost never matched the paint that was applied to the rest of the airplane; it almost always was darker that the surrounding paint. I have also read that the subcontractor that supplied that section used medium green 42 in error- this would definitely account for a different appearance in a b&w photo.  @Dana Bell would know, I'm betting. That being said, that is a very well-done model and the diorama is going to make it even better!

Mike

All accurate but in the case of the Memphis Belle it was indeed a replacement tail from an older scrapped aircraft. 

A quote from one write up "The lanky pilot climbed out of his seat to see exactly what had happened. “It looked like we had no tail at all,” Morgan recalled. “I got back in the cockpit and flew back to the base in two hours. It was tough flying, and tougher than that to set her down." I don't have the book anymore but so can't say which mission but there was a good write up about the incident and the fact they had to change the tail out.

 

You can even see in one of the few in service pictures that the camo blotches are cut off in an almost perfect straight line at the replaced panels.

 

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Repairs using parts of other more badly damaged airframes was pretty normal.

 

Here is a 1/72 B-17 that got a whole new wing!

 

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