Hasegawa

1/72 B-24D Liberator

Kit Number: 558

Reviewed by  Jim Pearsall, IPMS# 2209

MSRP: $75.95 Imported by Dragon Models USA ( www.dragonmodelsusa.com ). Thanks to Dragon for the review kit. Hasegawa Web site (English version): www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/e-w/E-index.htm The Story Behind the Model I live in Sun City, Arizona, a 55+ retirement community. Last year I discovered that Price Downey, a neighbor, was copilot on a B-24 in the 424th Bomb Squadron, 307th Bomb Group, 13th Air Force. He flew from Guadalcanal from 1943 to early 1944. He got his 25 missions in just in time to get home to learn about D-Day in June of 1944. His memory is very sharp, he flew for the airlines, and now lives half the year in Chicago and winters in Sun City. And he told me that he flew B-24s, and his first aircraft were B-24Ds. He's still not sure if he flew any J models in combat. He was in on the early battles in the South Pacific, arriving as soon as Guadalcanal had been made safe by the U. S. Marine Corps. So when Dave Morrissette announced that they needed someone to build the new Hasegawa B-24D in a fairly short time, I begged him for the chance. I had access to a crew member of a B-24D from the Pacific, and I could get a LOT of background on the aircraft, as well as build the kit fairly quickly. Sometimes a little begging and pleading, as well as having extra information gets you a primo item to review. B-24D Information Price was very young in 1943, so he was made copilot on his crew, with a more senior pilot as aircraft commander. The crew picked up their aircraft at Clovis, New Mexico. It was a B-24D-CO, built by Consolidated. I can't give you the aircraft series or serial number, as Price's log book is back in Chicago. As soon as they saw their B-24, they knew they were going to the Pacific Theater, as it was painted OD over Neutral Gray. If your plane was Desert Sand over Neutral Gray, you were going to North Africa. Why weren't B-17s the big deal in the Pacific that they were in the 8th Air Force? Engines. The B-17's Wright R-1690s had a 250 hour TBO (time between overhaul). The B-24's Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasps had a 500 hour TBO. Considering the primitive conditions of the SWPA, and the distance to the nearest overhaul facility, the B-24 was the aircraft of choice. The crew made an agreement that they would do everything possible to keep the crew together, and they would finish their entire tour in this B-24. Like many plans, this one failed to survive its' first contact with reality. While they were moving to join the 307th BG at Guadalcanal, the pilot taxied the plane too close to a rock crusher in the Caroline Islands, and badly damaged the wing. They hitched a ride to Guadalcanal. This explains why Price doesn't have any pictures of "his" airplane. For reasons like this, the squadron usually had more crews than aircraft, so whichever crews were on the roster for the day flew whichever aircraft were mission ready. Research on the Web Prior to the arrival of the kit, I began some research, as Price didn't have any of his pictures here in Arizona. And I found a marvelous resource- www.b24bestweb.com has over 6257 photos of 3811 different B-24s. I "joined" the web site. For a $5 contribution, you get an index of current photos e-mailed to you monthly, which has aircraft name, serial number (if known) squadron, group, and air force. I can tell you it certainly beats trying to look at all of those photos to find an aircraft from a particular squadron. This has to be the BEST resource for B-24 information I have found. For an $8 contribution, you can get their patch, plus the e-mailed index. The Letdown When the kit arrived, I called Price, and he came down to see this wonder. And then he said, "Our airplanes didn't look like that. They all had the nose turrets." More B-24 lore follows: When the B-24Ds first arrived, the Japanese discovered that a head-on attack worked best, as there was only one, maybe two .30 caliber guns in the nose, and there were two .50 calibers in the tail. The 30s didn't have the stopping power of the 50s, which could shred a Zero or Oscar with a single burst. Therefore all 13th AF B-24Ds were flown back to Honolulu and modified by replacing the large nose glass with a tail turret and a modified bombardier's position. Price's crew did ferry one aircraft back to Hawaii and returned to Guadalcanal with the modified aircraft. Tough duty, but someone's got to do it. This left me with the new Hasegawa B-24 to build, with no "gee whiz" stuff to go with it. Except for the preceding 2 pages. :) The Kit This kit comes in a BIG box, 16-1/2 x 10-3/4 x 3-1/2 inches. Many sprues, with lots of parts. Oh, boy, what a deal. Looking at the parts on the sprues, there are a number of unused parts which suggest that the follow-on B-24J will use most of these same parts, with just a change of forward fuselage. Everything is just what you expect from a Hasegawa kit, cleanly molded parts with recessed panel lines, no flash, no sink marks, or hidden ejector pin marks. The wings and rear fuselage are large moldings, but the seams meet cleanly with no warped parts to deal with. You get markings for a 9th AF aircraft, "The Squaw", B-24D-CO, Serial 41-11761, 9th AF, 98 BG, 343 BS in Sand/Gray, with a LOT of graffiti. The other decals are for "Princess" B-24D-15-CF, 42-63962, 8th AF, 44 BG, 506 BS in OD/Gray. All of this info was available at b24bestweb.com, using the aircraft names to search. According to the web site, Princess was originally named "Prince-ass", which was changed to "Prince" and then to "Princess". I chose to do "Princess", since I prefer the more simple markings. Building the B-24 Assembly goes forward nicely. You build the rear part of the fuselage first, interior, then the "outer shell". Everything fits marvelously, as I expected of a Hasegawa kit. I appreciated the spar which goes through the fuselage, which supports those long wings, and will protect the aircraft from splitting in half after a few years of sitting on the shelf.

A Word of Warning here: Do not skip the part of Step 3 where the nose gear (Part R9) is added to the main fuselage before the nose section is added. (see the green circle) While it is possible to add it later, it also possesses a VERY high degree of difficulty. Follow the instructions in Step 3! Another Word of Warning: Step 4, cockpit assembly is vague about how to assemble parts A6 and A7. (Red Arrows) If you look at the drawing in Step 5, it's WRONG. (Red Circle). A6 goes completely onto A7, clear to the step at the back of the tab. I assembled the cockpit as shown in Step 5, and glued it into the forward fuselage halves. The fuselage front and main sections wouldn't come close to mating. So I pulled the front fuselage apart and moved the assembly forward. Now the bombardier's position stuck out about 1/4 inch past the front of the fuselage, and the front glass (F23) couldn't be mounted. Once I tore the forward fuselage apart again, and fixed the A6/A7 joint, it went together very nicely. It was just as I have grown to expect from a kit of Hasegawa quality.

Another gripe I have about the kit is one which Hasegawa really couldn't do much about. The entire front of the fuselage is clear parts, F3, F23, G1 and G2. The plastic used for the clear parts was more brittle than the gray plastic used for the rest of the kit. It was harder to work with and didn't take well to either Tenax ® or Testor's Liquid thickened with glue. I finally wound up using gel-type CA on F3, G1 and G2 to get them to hold, and then had to use a sanding stick to get the seam down to nearly acceptable. I used Humbrol clear parts cement for the nose glass (F23) and the cockpit side windows. Since there's no load on these parts (the nose gear connects directly to the bomb bay front bulkhead, remember?), they do stay pretty much where you put them. Boy is My Face Red … After I published this review; I got an e-mail from Stephen Adams a member of the B-24 bestweb. Seems the nose gear doors weren't right on my model. As a journalist friend of mine said often, "If your Mother says she loves you, check her sources." And I HAD a primary source right here in the review. The photo under "Decals" shows the nose gear doors don't fold out, but fold in. And I built them outside the fuselage. The only excuse I can give is that I was so ready to finish this project, I got in a hurry.

It's not like I had perfect faith in the instructions, as I found out above, there were problems. And I got suckered. This is still a great kit. Just be aware of the instructions, and that they're good, but not as good as the kit. Then there's the question of how to get the B-24 to sit on its nose gear. There's not a lot of room in there, with the clear nose and canopy. The instructions call for 90 grams of weight. Do we have any idea of how much volume this is? The picture shows the nose section of the B-24D with 90 grams of nickels and 90 grams of super fine lead shot. I learned back in chemistry class that a nickel weighs 5 grams. So that's 18 nickels to make 90 grams. More on this conundrum later. BUT, back to the good things … I appreciate Hasegawa's method of installing the props. You assemble the engines, putting a little soft plastic ring inside, then put the engines into the nacelles, add the nacelles to the wing, and just before you finish, you add the props, which can turn, and can even be removed. This is great engineering! Also, the wheels are great. Note that they are already flattened on one side, to simulate the weight of the loaded aircraft. This also solved an assembly problem. With the nose gear pretty far inside the well, it's almost impossible to get the nose wheel on the axle. Except that when you turn the flattened side to the top, next to the fuselage, it goes on cleanly and with no problem. Ya gotta love it! Painting

OK, how difficult can it be? OD over Neutral Gray is a walk in the park. This is very true. Until you get to that glass nose, the canopy, and the turrets. Eduard has announced the availability of a mask set for this kit. Buy it. Use it. It'll be worth every penny.

The other part with some modeling skillz required is masking for the leading edges of the wings and horizontal and vertical stabilizers. The wings are pretty much a "brute force" mask, with large amounts of tape.

The horizontal stabs are pretty much the same, but the vertical tails require a pretty special mask. Those curves could require a lot of really thin tape. Or you could make your own special masks, like I did. The trick here is that Hasegawa tells you how much they've reduced the drawings of the color schemes. This allows you to either use a scanner and printer, or go to your local copy center and get the stabs blown up to 100%.

Then use a light table to create a mask. Here's a picture of mine. It's used in the living room to hold magazines until I use it for more important tasks. I use a sheet protector over the master and draw where the tape has to be cut on the tape. I then remove it and cut it on the glass table top. I don't know if the Eduard mask includes this one, but if it does, it's a real time and labor saver. On the other hand, learning a skill like this could really make you useful at work some day. Or not. Decals Here's a picture of the original aircraft from the b24bestweb.com site. Once again Hasegawa provides a great set of decals. I am beginning to find a definite correlation between time it takes for decals to come loose from the paper and the quality of the decal. These take anywhere from 3 to 6 seconds, depending on how large they are. I had no problem with the markings, except for one "star and bar" on the fuselage, which tore when I tried to reposition it over the side window. I suspect I'm at fault there, though. End Game After getting the decals on, I added those small parts which I invariably break off when I'm doing decals. The turrets snap into position in the top and rear of the fuselage. I was a little afraid I was going to ruin the top turret, as it took a good push to get it in. But it now rotates fine, and I suspect it would be a project to remove it. Those "horns" on the nose went on next, and I saved putting the front glass on until pretty late too, as that pair of .30 calibers stick out there where they can break in less than a heartbeat. When this was all done, I mounted the aircraft on a piece of gray foamcore board I bought at a craft store. It's cheap, sturdy, light and makes a good looking parking area for the aircraft. The edges prevent accidental contact with the guns, fore and aft. Additionally, the flat bottoms of the wheels glue down beautifully, relieving me of the necessity of weighting the nose. And that's why I didn't need 90 grams of weight in the forward fuselage. Overall Assessment Except for the groaner in the instruction drawing, there's nothing wrong with this kit. Even then, I was able to tear the assembly apart and reassemble it with glue three times before I got it right. The fact that I made several mistakes, but the parts fit well enough and are forgiving enough to enable me to fix my errors is a tribute to Hasegawa's engineering. I'm also really glad I found the b24bestweb.com site. It has more marking information than you'll ever find in a print book. I showed the finished aircraft to Price, and he really wants me to do one "just like this one, but with a turret nose". He likes it a lot, and it certainly brings back a lot of memories for him. Sometime I'll get the full story of how he survived ditching the B-24 in the Pacific. Thanks to Hasegawa and Dragon USA for the review kit, and IPMS/USA for the chance to build it.

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