Hasegawa

1/72 B-24J Assembly Ship

Kit Number: 00976

Reviewed by  Mike Kellner, IPMS# 30864

MSRP: $93.25 Website: www.dragonmodelsusa.com The B-24 first flew in December, 1939. Powered by four Pratt and Whitney R-1830-65 fourteen-cylinder engines, it went on to be America's most-produced aircraft, with over 18,000 eventually being built. The USAAF was putting up such massive amounts of aircraft in the ETO that after takeoff it was difficult to find one's own group, so they came up with these brightly-colored planes with stripes, dots, or other easy-to-see paint jobs on which to form up. I chose to model the 855 BS, 491 BG's B-24 "Tubarao", an Eighth Air Force assembly ship, from January, 1945. This is the second Hasegawa B-24J which I've done, so I knew what I was in for, and was hoping some of the shortcomings of the first kit had been addressed by Hasegawa in this latest issue. The kit still has some unique features which I liked, but also had some disappointments. I was impressed by the way the props were molded---typically, the attached sprue is connected to the hubs, ruining whatever detail is there and making for difficult clean up. This kit, however, has the sprue attached to the propeller blades, which makes clean up much easier. The kit is molded in light gray plastic with fine recessed panel lines. The fit overall is OK, but I expected better. On my sample, the lower nose glass was smaller than its surrounding area, same as the first one I built. The side cockpit windows didn't fit well for me, and the seven separate pieces of each nacelle needed some filling and a lot of sanding. On the other hand, the wing-to-fuselage fit was perfect. The nose section is molded in clear plastic, which makes it nice to mask windows. Although the instructions said to paint the inside first with interior green, I cheated by first spraying the built model Gunze interior green and then spraying over that with Model Master non-buffing Metalizer silver. Shading was done by darkening some silver. To install the bug-eyed windows up front, I had to cut out the flush sections and glue in the squares containing them. I either lost or was missing an engine cowl, so I substituted one from a Minicraft kit.

The nose gear was also broken when I received the kit and I had to repair it. The interior features seats, throttle quadrant, instrument panel, bomb racks and bombs, so it wasn't sparse, but it wasn't full either---detailers can add more. Bomb bay doors can be made open or closed---I chose to close them, but fitting them is tricky. The ball turret is a very nice one, but not used on the aircraft I modeled. Separate wheels and tires makes it easy to paint first, then put them together, but I don't care for the flattened (weighted) tires; they just look like flat tires. If you look at a real aircraft, there really is hardly a flat spot, and very little bulge.

A mistake in the instructions which I missed the first time around is the cockpit floor. The instructions show part A-6 [the floor] butting up to A-7 [the forward bulkhead], but make sure you slide the floor through the bulkhead so about 1/4 inch sticks out the other side, or it won't fit into the fuselage.

The large decal sheet looks nice, and there are two choices for markings, but the decals are brittle and somewhat translucent---they're on register, but are impossible to settle down. The top and bottom of the wings and a large band around the fuselage are decals, and I could not get them to lie down, even with multiple coats of Micro Sol. I also tried Mr. Mark Softer and didn't have any better luck. To do a nice job, you need aftermarket decals, or paint all but the lettering. I like my aircraft to sit with no tail post, so I weighted the nose. It took a lot of lead up front, hidden everywhere I could put it---in fact, I used 2 wheel weights. The newly-produced metal B-24 interior set #72009 from Scale Aircraft Conversions (www.scaleaircraftconversions.com) would probably be a good investment for this model. The gun barrels are the best I've seen in this scale, and there is some wheel well detail in the wings. This is the best B-24 in 1/72 scale so far, but I'm not sure it's worth the extra money over what you get with the Minicraft kit. My thanks to IPMS/USA, Hasegawa, and Dragon Imports for the opportunity to review this kit.