Sheet:

Superscale 72-680 for B-17G Fortress

Units: 815 BS/483 BG

Price

$6.00

Reviewer:

Scott Van Aken

The most built and most modeled US WWII 'heavy' bomber is the B-17. We are lucky that there are a number of them around. Starting with a rather old version, there is the Airfix kit. A newer one is offered from time to time by Matchbox, but it is light on detail. Hasegawa had, for years, the best one about. It is the older raised panel line technology, but it looks the part. Nowadays, you have the very nice Academy version, though some will comment that the engine cowlings are a bit odd as is the nose. Frankly, it looks ok to me, but you do have a choice.

This sheet has two planes from the same squadron. It seems that the 815th didn't use any sort of fuselage code letters  to identify its planes and just had the group Y markings. These two planes were in OD over neutral grey and one of them was the last camouflaged B-17G built by Boeing. That plane was 'Good Deal' and flew 80 missions during the war. "Miss Treated' was nearly the last (as you can see, it's serial number is only 15 away from 'Good Deal's. However, her fate was much different. The plane landed with a hung bomb that dropped when the plane touched down. It destroyed the aircraft.

In addition to the camouflage, these planes had red rudders and elevators. The engine cowlings were in dark blue so it was a relatively colorful aircraft. The instructions go into quite a bit of detail on these planes to help the modeler make an accurate miniature.

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