Consolidated B-24 Liberator

Saturn5 tony Very poor model!

Tim Mansfield [img1]
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Cuajete Looks very nice. Congratulations!

Clifford Keesler Lucky! where did you find that one?

Augie Ebay decals are shot to shit but for £20 couldnt argue

Clifford Keesler Yea I have wanted that one for along time. You should be able to find aftermarket decals easily.

Augie I will keep my eyes out for another for ya.
Decals should be, but I want USN markings for it.

Clifford Keesler Ah, you are going to a Navy bird cool. What was the Naval deseganiton for the B-24, I know the B-25 was a PBJ-1 which is what my next B-25 will be.

Clifford Keesler P.s. Thanks.

Augie I think they were PB4Y-1

Thomas Bischoff you have the Koster conversion set into a PB4Y1? There is currently one on Ebay

Wim van der Luijt Great find, I like the heavies in 1:48 but have to figure out were to put them first

Augie Hi thomas, i dont but think there were few earky ones that had original turret

Thomas Bischoff indeed there are a few - I flipped through Naval Fighters vol 105 and found a handful in tri-colour camo and one very worn out white one. There's even one with sharkteeth and one with noseart

Clifford Keesler I have seen the one with the shark mouth. cool looking plane.

Michael Hickey The engine of the B-24D I hand painted, wings are now assembled and cockpit will get painted tomorrow. Then I'll close up the fuselage.

Tim I put large amounts of lead in nose and frobt of engine nacelles....and it still tail sat. A clear bit of sprue glued to the tail bump skid keeps it from tail sitting.

Sören Reifert Great work!

ChevSam My father was the pilot of the Goon in the CBI. Great job on the model. I do have dvds of his 8 mm films taken during combat, in China and India.

Robbie @ChevSam - you should post any stories your father had flying "The Goon" that he might of passed on to you. You google 'B-24 The Goon' and you get a ton of info back. The top gunner has some fame down here in Arizona.

Clifford Keesler Very nice B-24.

KOJI OKADA Do you have a problem on engine cowling?

Tim The detail on the cowlings was very subtle so I went over it with a panel line scribe. I also added deluxe materials liquid gravity into each cowling to help stop tail sitting (it did not work).

Tim Thanks @ChevSam . The history of the aircraft and crew was very interesting and influenced which tail markings to use. Great nose art too.

Tim Mansfield [img1]

Tim Mansfield [img1]
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Ron Garcia I think anyone interested in aircraft needs to build at least one of Monogram's (Revell now) big bombers. Think of it as a right of passage. I've built several of these starting when I was was a kid (a long time ago!). I bought an old Superscale decal set of The Dragon and His Tail many years ago and finally decided to take the plunge and build the model using the decals. Fits are rough and there is lots of sanding required - especially around the engine nacelles. I kept the bomb doors closed which helped eliminate some of the detail work. I left all the guns off until the end to avoid the inevitable snapping and losing of the gun barrels. The turrets must be glued together so they have a seam right through the clear areas. Maybe if some other company tackles this aircraft they'll find a better solution for this. Of course a bomber of this size would probably cost at least $200 USD nowadays! Speaking of clear parts, DEFINITELY invest in Eduard's mask set for this beast. It will save a TON of time, plus trying to figure out what should be masked on the turrets without their instruction guide is extremely difficult. I know from doing it the hard way with my previous builds of this kit. The model is a serious tail sitter. I added lead fishing sinkers, BBs, and even heavy nails, but it still sat on its tail. I ended up shoving some large heavy screws into the wheel well to get it to sit correctly. The aluminum finish was tough. I sanded and polished numerous coats of Alclad aluminum but some areas still ended up "pebbly". In the end, I got it to where I was satisfied with it and called it good. The decals went on surprisingly easily without any tearing. The clear areas between the red stripes on the rudder yellowed a bit after drying over the white rudders. I don't know if this was a "fun" build (I seriously hate seam filling and sanding) but it sure looks impressive sitting on the shelf. I still have (another) B-29, B-58, and B-1 to build and before I'm done with the big bombers in my stash. This one took long enough so it'll probably be awhile. If some other company produces a new B-24, with all the multimedia elements they are sure to add, I don't even want to think about how long it would take to complete it! Definitely not for me! Now go out and build one of these bombers!

Phil Marchese The early F-7A modification including the two featured in this kit had the A-6A nose turret as distinct from the A-6B. The upper plexiglas areas are smaller on the A-6A compared to the A-6B.

Arne Greve The review is horrible

Holger Kranich Hab mich auch vertan, ist gar kein Review...

Augie Well far as the name its listed under goes, its correct. Standard practice to list them as per the box details.

The date on it is a typo I think. Info i have seen says that release for this was around 98 which would make sense with the time line.

Cheers

Phil Marchese Augie, that wasn t my point at all. I understand the naming convention. My point is, in the absence of a review link, that the infornmation I provided helps a buyer make an informed decison. That is a large part of what this site provides. In a less direct way, it also serves to provide a manufacturer researching the market availability, that the subject has not really been covered. Agree?

Augie Oh indeed, I was just pointing out was all. no offence ment

Phil Marchese Thanks.

Kevin Phipps Building this for a multi engine bomber group build

Thomas Bischoff just found out that I have this beauty in my stash - must have bought it 10 years ago

Clifford Keesler This one is looing very nice.

Łukasz Gliński Interesting topic and nice preshading, watching

Bart Goesaert looks good so far...

Gary Nice job. Now try not to break off those guns. Gary

Sören Reifert Damm you special offers

soheil moghisi very nice.

Calvin Gifford Good luck with that kit! Turns out great but takes a lot of elbow grease and a couple tubes of Squadron putty!

Es-haq Khosravi Great job!

James Turnbull Cool

Martien Lourens Nice

Adrian Shingler Thanks much appreciated

Wim van der Luijt And now to find a B-24H in 1:48 ...this will need a conversion set and a lot of rescribing :-|

Phil Marchese Mocked-up with slip fit of the "half S" curve the I introduced into the Liberator lexicon in 2000. It replaced the S-curve at Block L-1--FO. I narrowed the academy A-15 Emerson by sanding the middle seams of both parts and lowered the profile by removing the raised mounting cam.

Phil Marchese Moving along. mostly clear, home made parts and final assembly. working seams which are worn out on the 50 year old molds. Factory decals and insignia, guns and electronic will be last.

Phil Marchese Mock-up of homemade lower nose vacuformed L series clear panels. some triming and glazing for trapazoidal bomb scan windows is in progress.

Phil Marchese Working on the clear, homemade parts, always the tricky part of WWII multi-engine warplanes.
Added weight to flt eng deck but now the belly radar had to be counterbalanced to get CG adjusted.

Kelly Wellington Heh...It seems I failed to add the finish pix. It turned out reasonably well, but I had to buy aftermarket decals because the MPC decals that came with the kit were crud. What I found amusing was talking to the hobby shop staffer who, when I told him it was an MPC kit, he asked if it was white plastic. He hated all that white plastic that MPC evidently used. In this case, I didn't need to do much of the painting on the lower surfaces of the craft....it's white. It's unpainted.

Kelly Wellington The intent is to produce a facsimile of a RAF VLR Liberator II of the Coastal Command, 1943-5.

Kelly Wellington Okay...I haven't even gotten photos up and I'm almost done.

It was in white, so I've so far left any lower portion of the craft in the color of the plastic. I don't know how spot painting will affect it...will find out.

This is a significant build. It's the first where I had multiple 'working' parts (props spin, wheels roll, mounted guns move, turrets turn...turning turrets with swivelling guns!) and I got them to all work as per the directions.

The kit is 'American Airfix' of the last millenia. The fit is okay with minor mismatch over the flight deck requiring plastic shaving, and the centerline joint needed light spackling. Small amounts of flash, easily dealt with...worst on the clear parts. Small problems with the gun elevation setup on two of the turrets (nose and tail)...the pin connecting the two barrels is a mite long...when they have to fit in to given slots, this becomes a big deal (and my biggest headache.

Oh...it's tailheavy. So much so, I think it might be pointless trying to counterweight it with the space I have available. *sigh*

Kelly Wellington Oh...The wheels go up. And, with modest amount of fumbling, they can be extracted and repositioned in the gears down mode. They snap into place.

Kelly Wellington And control surfaces move, too!

Phil Marchese You got a clean built out of the old girl. Nice going!

Phil Marchese That is weird...its been updated to cover with pic #14 which it does in my projects but not here.

Phil Marchese In the b&w photos of the real plane the cowl rings appear to be color coded but I can't find references that the 98th BG did so. Can anyone help? I have Mindy, Rust, Aircam mkgs, camo &marking, Scutts, but not Dorr.

Phil Marchese I ve add pictures of the Light Weight power turret designed for the L Series Liberators. This image is larger than actual size so it shows the vagracies of this entirel scrath built, all plastic turret more than which will be percievable when in place on the a/c.

Es-haq Khosravi Excellent job!

Clifford Keesler Excellent.

Sgt Marine Great job on the 24 man!

Jens Well done!

Roland Sachsenhofer W-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l! Among the best I have ever seen!

Robert Espenschied Hi Matt,
I'm not a big fan of the B-24 but yours looks great. congrats...

Phil Marchese I too thought that this is perhaps the best and certainly among the best stand off builds of this kit I ve seen in the nearly 40 years of the mold.

John E Very well done!

Rob Tittle Will be doing: A Dragon and His Tail.

David Lengyel Great build mate, congratulations!

Roland Sachsenhofer My compliments to those well earned awards!
Picture 211 shows two individuals in the background with folded hands: I would fully agree if this is a gesture of adoration...

Augie Outstanding bill well deserved

Holger Kranich What did i say some month ago? This is a gold medal model!
Well done uncle Bill!

Guido Haesevoets Congratulations!!!!

Burkhard D Well deserved. Your Liberator thread is already an internet classic in my book.

Philip De Keyser Congratulations Bill!!!! It"s well deserved, you make from this old Kit a real beauty
Greetz, Phil

Bill Gilman Thanks everyone! I appreciate it. Roland, I hadn't noticed the two people in the background before. It kind of looks like they're praying, but for what I don't know. Probably praying that I pack up the model and go home, so they can take the tables down!

JOHN THOMAS Very neat

JOHN THOMAS Nice work

Gabor Szabo Wow, It looks really good! I like these kind of projects!

Phil Marchese Thanks, but now don t get the idea I finish them! These are journies, not destinations.

Gabor Szabo I see - I have some too

Mathias Carl Great project.
And realy good pictures.
I am looking forward to see more of it

Charles Jones Bill, I got one a few weeks ago for about $50 including shipping and insurance. I had the chance at near mint kit of the B-24 Blue Streak for free as well as some other kits but the deal fell through for various reasons. Having said that, I now have the Privateer and vacation time next week so I am going to try to do an out of the box build with just sanding the rivets and using the right paint. The last time I built this kit I left the topsides unpainted blue plastic and used flat white latex house paint for the underside. You can imagine what it looked like but to me at the time it was a master piece.

Thanks for the inspiration to build this thing and thanks for the WIP shots of what I can look forward to.

Bill Gilman I'm a little confused, did you get the Revell PB4Y-1 Liberator (the one that I'm working on) or the Revell PB4Y-2 Privateer (the ex-Matchbox kit)?

Charles Jones The one you are building, the PB4Y-1. I forgot about that trench network that Matchbox put out. As I said, I'm going to do this out of the box as far as adding things mostly because all my WWII correct spares are long gone. Only thing I'm planning is taking down the rivets and preshading some of the panels. May have to cut stencils for the national insignia if the decals aged poorly.

Edward May If I remember right the old Revell PB4Y-1 is just a rebox of their B-24D Liberator from the same era? I have photos of my grandfather's built up B-17 & B-24 hanging from his garage ceiling in the late '60s and so opted to build the same albeit from a much later boxing of the same kit. Ugh, those molds were so long in the tooth that I can openly admit to having built limited run kits that were far easier to shape up into something decent. Along both the top and bottom fuselage join lines the plastic was curled inward requiring copious amounts of putty and sanding just to get a reasonable join. (Which in itself wasn't all bad, as it gave me the resolve to sand off all of those spurious saucer sized rivets and was actually the first model I wound up rescribing all of its panel lines. I still wasn't 100% satisfied with the end result and broke it down for spares about five years after building it. Back then the Academy kits weren't so expensive, so I picked up their PB4Y-1 as well as the so-called Matchbox "trench network" PB4Y-2, which I will probably fill in and rescribe the appropriate panel lines to scale. I like the Academy PB4Y-1 as it looks like a blend between the late marks of B-24s and the PB4Y-2, due that particular type of nose turret. (Correct me if I'm wrong in believing that no USAAF B-24s used that type of nose turret?) My own issues aside, you're doing an AMAZING job on this antiquated kit!! My brand of "aftermarket products" usually begins and ends at Evergreen Sheet Styrene, lots of studying photos, cutaways, parts diagrams and scratch building but seeing projects like this is certainly broadening my horizons.

Phil Marchese I feel obligated to point out the Matchbox Privateer has raised detail throughtout most of the kit and where recessed, is much finer than say the new release Revell B-17 and many other "modern". 1:72 kits.

Bill Gilman I believe it's correct that no USAAF B-24s used the Erco turret, but I could be wrong. It's always been one of the strikes against the Matchbox PB4Y-2 that the Erco turret is too large, and it does kind of look that way. That said, the Matchbox always builds up nicely in all of the samples I've seen. It's on my wishlist.

Erik Houghton Leads one to wonder, Bill....is the Falcon Clear-vax Erco turret (in 'set 11 US Navy WWII pt.2') a "corrected" turret? It as well as several other pieces are provided specifically for the MB PB4Y, and the instructions seem to mention the kit nose turret inaccuracy issue.....