1/48 Monogram B-29 Superfortress

by Chris Churchman

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Here is my B-29 ‘Atomic Tom’ from the Korean War.  The kit took me about 180 hours to complete spread out over about a year.  In addition to the kit, I added resin-weighted wheels, resin .50 gun barrels, and decals from Aeromaster.

After spending many hours on the interior, I didn’t want to waste all the effort by closing up the fuselage and never seeing it again.  I decided to cut out some random shapes from the side of the fuselage, so you can see inside.  I took inspiration from another modeller's B-29 on the net, and added the magazine, poster and map to make things a bit more interesting.  

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The main issue I found with this kit is getting the canopy to fit and blend with the fuselage.  It took a lot of effort and help from an excellent masking set, to get decent result.

The raised panel lines were replaced in some areas with scribed panel lines due to sanding them off.  I couldn’t face a total re-scribe, and I don’t think it is really that obvious between raised and scribed lines.

The engine nacelles were also difficult to fit, especially as you needed to fill these with weight to get the aircraft to sit correctly on its wheels.  I made some locating points from scrap sprue, which made it a little easier.

Painting was completed with various shades of silver & aluminium from Humbrol and satin black on the underside which were all airbrushed on.  I am not sure if this colour scheme is correct as I could not find any pictures showing ‘Atomic Tom’ with the black underside, but I thought it looked more interesting this way.

The decals were then added.  The Aeromaster set were the best I have ever used, and took little effort to get them to sink down and conform to the panel lines. The kit decals were a bit more effort and needed a few applications of micro set to get them down the same.

Weathering was done with pastels and a stubby brush, followed by a coat of clear acrylic.

I added the resin .50 cal machine guns that had much better detail than the standard kit parts.  I fixed 3 to the rear position (after removing the 20mm cannon) as this was depicted in many pictures of Korean B29’s.  Again I am not sure if ‘Atomic Tom’ carried three 50’s, but again I liked it because it was different.

I am fairly happy with the end result, but don’t think I would build another one, having now completed this one successfully.  A couple of smaller kits might be on the agenda next.

Thanks for looking, and any comments or advice are always welcome.

Chris

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Photos and text © by Chris Churchman