Hasegawa

1/72 B-24 D “Ploesti Raid”

Kit Number: 00961

Reviewed by  Fred A. Amos, IPMS# 6672

MSRP: $91.59 Distributor's website: www.dragonmodelsusa.com I have built several B-24s in various scales over the years, Revell, Academy, and Monogram, but this is, by far, the strangest one I have ever built. There is a lot of detail but 90% of it is invisible because it can’t be seen once the fuselage is closed up. The instruction sheet has errors and omissions in it that will cause you difficulty. It is so tail heavy that eight pieces of lead weighing 5/8ths of an ounce couldn’t bring the nose down. That’s five ounces. My assumption is that, in order to get the most out of their molds, Hasegawa engineered the kit with a lot of common parts. For instance, there are two sets of sprues that are repeated -- sprue N four times and sprue Q twice. There are a lot of parts for the later models of the B-24 that are not used on the model. The Fuselage Starting in the main fuselage, there are interior bulkheads and floors that fit into the fuselage side like a well-fitted glove. The location pins are semi-round with a flat side that fits a hole in the fuselage and they are very precise so you must pay close attention to their orientation. But when the fuselage sides are joined, the only thing you will be able to see is the bomb bay interior (if you choose to leave it open) and the side gunner’s floor and opposite wall (if you choose to leave the side windows off). Once the top turret and tail turret are in place, that detail is lost too. You have to wonder if this didn’t add to the cost of the kit. The Nose Section The top and both sides of the nose section from the back bulkhead of the cockpit forward are molded in clear plastic. The only advantage I can see for this is that Hasegawa incorporated the windshield and top of the canopy with the top piece. You still have to attach your choice of side windows, (bulged or flat) to the windshield before you can glue the three parts together. Before you can glue the parts together, be aware that the instructions are misleading about the interior parts. The instructions clearly call for the floor of the cockpit (part A-6) to be glued into the front bulkhead (part A-7) with the leading edge flush with the front of the bulkhead. If this is done, as I did it, the rear part of the floor is too long. That part of the floor is part of the connection to the main fuselage. I cut the floor about 1/8 inch in front of the area of the floor that would be against the bulkhead. That left about 1/8 inch extended beyond the sidewalls and that lay on a bulkhead in the front of the main fuselage. Before I glued the front of the fuselage to the back part I had made up my mind not to glue the nose gear into place. I can just see this getting broken off while handling the rest of the assembly. I guess it is up to the individual how this works out, but I will say that I did have a bit of a problem getting the nose gear in place later. Be aware that the nose gear doors are not on the outside of the fuselage as the instructions show. On the B-24 D the doors retracted up inside the enclosure. The Bomb Bay With the bomb bay you have two options, open or closed. But the instructions don’t give you the assembly details for the interior. In fact, on the instruction sheet parts map, it blacks out all of the bomb bay parts except the interior sidewalls, (which is a nice detail touch). So, I decided to heck with it and built the interior anyway. Another thing to look out for is attaching the bomb to the racks. The racks have little knobs that stick out from the rack presumably to glue into a hole or socket in the bomb. But the bomb has a tab on it, not holes. So I super glued the bomb to the rack before I put the racks in the bomb bay. The Gun turrets and Positions There are four machine guns for the glazed nose area, two for the side positions, two each for the tail and upper turret and several more for the later B-24 models that you won’t use. The instructions show three guns in the nose but, if you study your reference material, you may see that you can use four. The instructions show the assembly of the two turrets but no guns are shown when they are installed on the model. Again the guns were not shown in the side positions, just the window in place. All these parts and no instruction options to use them. This needs improved. Wing to Fuselage One of the nice things about this kit is the fit of the wings. The kit has an H-shaped structure that fits into the fuselage sides before they are joined. The ends of the fixture fit into the wings to get the correct angle of the dihedral. The end of the wing goes into a socket in the fuselage. The fit is so well engineered that I didn’t use any glue when I put it together. One of the less attractive features of the kit is the four engine nacelles. Not counting the engine’s four parts, each nacelle has five pieces. Four of the parts are common to the four N sprues and one to the two Q sprues. I strongly suggest that you number the Q parts before they are cut from the sprue, it may make a difference to the fit to the wing. I personally couldn’t see the difference in the parts, but I suspect that it is in the turbo exhaust part on Q 4 and 5. Only the forward part of the exhaust pipes are seen on these parts The remainder on the exhaust part is four identical parts N 4 which will create a pain trying to fit them to the bottom of the wing. As I said, the four parts are identical. However on the mounting post under the wing, one has a square peg and the other has a round peg but the hole in the bottom of part N 4 is square. Go figure that one. The Academy and Revell kits have a one-piece exhaust, which can be painted before it is attached to the wing. Turret Clear Parts Briefly, the clear parts for the two turrets do not fit well. And to top that off, when you try to place the rear turret in its place, it is too large for the opening. Final Results The end results were not too bad all in all. I painted the bottom of the model with Flo-Quil RR color Reefer Gray which is a good match for US Army Neutral Gray. The interior was painted with Humbrol # 266 Green for Interior Green. The upper color was Humbrol Sand which I believe is HI 6 or 8. The label was in pretty bad shape. After the paint was dry, I sanded the lead of a carpenters pencil and applied the dust to the model. It appeared that I had overdone the application so I tried to wipe it off with a paper tissue napkin. Fortunately that toned it down pretty will so I left it. That’s what you see in the pictures. The decals were clean and in good registry and transferred well. But it appears I didn’t get them sucked down to the surface well enough as evidenced by the decal on the side of the nose. Final Thoughts Recently Hasegawa has come out with several very expensive 1/72 scale kit’s, the B-24’s, B-25’s, B-26’s and He 111’s to name a few. To be honest, other than this B-24 D, the only other one I have built is the He 111 H8 with the cable cutter. While the exterior detail is very detailed and delicate, it appears that what you’re paying for is the engineering that went into making the kits so that Hasegawa could produce more than one variant of the model leaving the builder with a lot of unused pieces. The cost of the kit is a personal decision as it is almost $100. Thanks to the IPMS Reviewer Corps and Dragon Models USA for providing this kit for review.