Minicraft

1/144 - B-29 Superfortress

Kit Number: 14609

Reviewed by  Jim Pearsall, IPMS# 2209

MSRP: $12.99 Website: www.minicraftmodels.com A Short History of this Review: I started out to do this review as a Tu-4, the Soviet version of the B-29. This was brought on by my review of "Soviet Strategic Airpower" by Yefim Gordon. The review is here.

Then I discovered that the kit was a rebox of the earlier Minicraft B-29, and in fact that kit was made from the Crown molds. So the model itself is over 30 years old. It would be unfair to judge this kit on just the plastic, so I built two models, one using the kit decals, one using "home made" decals. The Minicraft Kit Since both models are identical, the construction was almost simultaneous. The Crown kit came out well over 30 years ago, and has not aged well. Minicraft is not responsible for the errors and omissions in shape, detail and fit. If this were a new tool, I would be disappointed in the model. The first thing I found was that the interior of the kit is less than sparse. It's just a flat plate which is glued into the fuselage. Fortunately I had bought a pair of B-29 cockpits from Matador Models several years ago. ( http://www.matadormodels.co.uk/ ) The metal cockpits had an OK fit, requiring the removal of the mounting locators for the Minicraft "interior".

There were a couple of other "features" which required some modeling skill and plain old hard work. The three observation blisters for the gun aimers are inserted from the inside of the fuselage, and the four turrets have to be trapped between the fuselage halves. Also, the horizontal stabilizer and the nose gear strut are inserted before the fuselage is assembled. This makes handling the aircraft during painting, decals and assembly an opportunity to push one of the blisters into the fuselage or break off a gun. Also, the blisters really get in the way when painting. They have to be masked soon after the start, and not unmasked until after the decals are on. Also, the three antennas on the top of the fuselage make it difficult to fill and sand the top seam, which really shows up on a silver airplane. I left the turrets off until later in the process. I put about an ounce of birdshot in behind the cockpit, through the nose wheel opening, and glued them in with Gator Glue. The wing assemblies, top and bottom fit pretty well. It only took a few minutes with a medium grade sanding stick to remove the seams. The fit on the sides of the engine mounts was OK, but did require attention from a seam scraper and miniscule amounts of filler. The fit of the wings to the fuselage is a problem. The mount on the fuselage is a "stub" about 1/16 inch long, and since the wing doesn't exactly match, it was necessary to do a lot of filling and sanding get a good looking wing root. The engines come as 2 parts per nacelle, and the part fits the interior of the nacelle very tightly. I was somewhat disappointed that the mounts for the props are large enough to block seeing the engine detail, which I spent a couple of hours painting and dry brushing, only to find they're not visible. If you want to, you could reduce the diameter the inner hubs, and Aeroclub makes replacement B-29/C-97 props with smaller hubs. The fit of the nacelles on the wing was incredibly tight. I had to scrape and sand both parts on all 4 engines on both kits to get them to mount. I left off the props, as I'm sure I would have broken at least 2 or 3 blades either mounting the nacelles or during handling. Also, it made painting easier.

So now the wings are on, the seams are smoothed, and it's time to paint. At least this part was fairly simple. I masked the cockpit and airbrushed the entire aircraft silver. I used Testors ® Chrome Silver, thinned with their enamel thinner, so it didn't shine too much. I painted the blue areas on the wingtips, tail tip and over the wing. There's a band under the nose which the painting instructions show, but with no color called out. It's the same blue. Same with the nose gear doors, except I "knew" that they'd be red on a B-50, and should also be on a B-29. Of course later, after the decal was on, and it was too late, I found a photo of "Atomic Tom", and the nose doors are also blue. There's a black stripe on the vertical stabilizer. I test fitted the clear part for the nose, and it was pretty awful. All I had to do was use a medium to coarse sanding stick on both sides of the back of the clear part until it matched the fuselage on both sides. This part fits quite tightly into the fuselage opening, which makes for a good fit, but it's pucker time every time you insert or remove the part to test fit, because you KNOW you're going to crack it. When I got the part to fit fairly well, I tried to paint it using my usual method of masking and airbrushing. Lousy results. It was just about impossible to get all of the lines parallel, equal and without some of that thinned silver paint creeping under the mask. I went to the local art supply store, and bought an ultra-fine silver paint pen. This worked just great, since the B-29 greenhouse has mostly parallel straight lines. The wheels had ejector pin marks on one side of all the tires. Fortunately they stand proud of the tire, and could just be sanded off. And here I lucked out again. My brother-in-law used to run a sign shop. Before he retired, I asked him if he could make me a series of letters that they use on the vinyl banners. I asked for periods, 4 of each, in descending size from ¼' diameter to 1/8". He did better than that, sending me 2 sets. These are super wheel masks.

I put on the engine nacelles without inserting the props. The assembly shows putting on a retaining ring on the prop shaft the back of the engines, then putting the nacelles on the wing. With the extremely tight fit of the nacelles, it wasn't going to happen. On the bright side, the prop shafts fit so tight in their holes in the engines that it's almost impossible to turn the props anyway, so there's almost zero danger of one falling out. DECALS Here's where the new kit really shines. First of all, you get markings for three post WW2 B-29s. Well actually one B-29 and two Washingtons. Washington? Yes, we sold/lent/gave the RAF B-29s after the war, and the markings are for one aircraft with RAF Germany in 1951, the other with the Royal Australian Air Force in the mid-50s. If you're looking to do something out of the ordinary, these are your decals. The B-29 is from the 19th BG, Kadena Okinawa, in 1950. The decals are simply marvelous, because they're printed by Cartograf. They come off the backing sheet cleanly, and can be moved around to get alignment without tearing, folding, cracking or rolling. The basic markings are good, but there are also three window decals, two in front and one under the tail on the left side. These add a lot to the looks of the finished model. Finishing the B-29A I now put the landing gear, as well as the doors. I found the tail gunner's position to be incorrectly shaped, but was able to make up for most of this by painting the windows in the correct conformation. The tail guns are also oversimplified, but again, this is an almost 40-year old mold. I installed the turrets, inserted the props, and the new kit was done.

The Build, Part 2: The Tu-4 Becomes a B-29B Then fate intervened. While I was working on the major subassemblies on what was going to be the Tu-4, I went to a World War 2 roundtable at the local American Legion. There I heard about "The Last Mission" from Bill Mathay, who was a bombardier on the last B-29 bombing mission of the war. When they got back from the mission, their ground crew was jumping up and down and cheering. Bill said: "I never thought they'd be that happy that we got back." But the fact was that while they were in the air, on 14/15 August 1945, Emperor Hirohito had announced the Japanese surrender. And there's a back story to that, too.

So the Tu-4 became another B-29, this one a B-29B. B models had the turrets removed, but the side and top blisters for the gun aimers were kept, with observers. As Bill said, they were there to make sure there wasn't an engine fire or oil leak. The other highly visible changes were the radars. The tail position had an AN/APQ-15 radar, and under the fuselage was the AN/APQ-7 "Eagle" bombing through overcast radar. I was glad that I hadn't installed the turrets by trapping them between the fuselage halves as the instructions recommend. Instead, I was planning to cut the bottom plate off the shaft, and glue them in later. It made it lots easier to sand down and putty over the positions for the 4 turrets. I painted the bottom black, as the 315th BW, which flew the B models in combat flew mostly at night. Their targets were the oil refineries on the main Japanese island of Honshu. I was lucky in my start looking for markings, as Bill had an artist's rendering of his aircraft, but in all silver. Still, it gave me a starting point. I further lucked out, and found a color photo of the "Jughound Jalopy" markings on the internet. Sorry, I can't find them again, it was an image search, and I can't get it to repeat. The photo was of sufficient quality to allow me to clean it up and produce a decal. Of course the fact that in 1/144 the cartoon is only about ¼ inch tall helps. I did use the "stars and bars" from an older Minicraft B-29, and they were not really good. They didn't want to come off the paper, but they did lay down and stay with only a little Micro Sol. I masked and painted the diamond on both sides of the tail, and made a decal for the H in the center, as well as the aircraft number. I also had scanned the new kit decals, and used those marvelous windows on this model. I scratch built the APQ-7 Eagle radar using a piece of strip styrene and super gluing on two straight pins as supports. I drilled holes in the bottom of the fuselage and glued the pins into the holes. The APQ-15 radar on the tail gun was simulated by gluing one of the birdshot that escaped from the nose weight in under the tail guns. The landing gear, cockpit clear parts, doors, etc. are exactly like the other kit, and went together exactly the same.

So the Jughound Jalopy was also finished. So here's the back story on the "last mission" The Back Story The B-29s on the last mission took off to bomb the last operating oil refinery in Japan, to keep it from falling into Soviet hands, in case they tried an invasion, resulting in the same head-to-head confrontations then coming up in Germany. Because the mission was almost beyond the B-29's range from Guam, the B-29s took off with full fuel, but a reduced bomb load. The 315th Bomb Wing, which had been in action from Guam since June of 1945, specialized in oil refineries, and if successful, this would destroy the last of the 9 refineries. They took off from Guam at about 6 PM, and returned at about 11 AM the next day, arriving home after Hirohito's announcement. But here's the neat part of the story. The shortest route to the refinery went near Tokyo. The 315th did not fly in a large formation, which would have taken extra fuel to form, but went individually, in a "bomber stream". As they overflew the Tokyo area, the air raid sirens went off, and the city was blacked out. And this went on for hours, as individual aircraft flew past. Then just as the last planes passed the Tokyo area, the first of the returning bombers came through on their way home. The blackout lasted all night. At that time, a group of Japanese officers were attempting to kidnap Hirohito to stop the announcement. Due to the blackout, and the fact that Hirohito hid somewhere in the huge Imperial Palace, they couldn't find him, or the recording he had made ordering the surrender. So the "last mission" did contribute to the end of the war, even if the refinery target was not strategically necessary. So that's why I HAD to build Jughound Jalopy instead of the Tu-4. Because I'm a sucker for the great story. Overall Evaluation The reason to buy this kit is the decals. The markings are interesting, and certainly not run-of-the-mill WW2 B-29s. Also, the decal quality is just head and shoulders above the earlier kits. The model itself is from an old mold, and there are fit problems. Also, I'm not sure that the vertical stabilizer has the correct height. Another real advantage is that it is 1/144. I can still build my Tu-4 and put it and the two B-29s in less shelf space than a 1/72 B-29 would take.