1/48 B-26 Marauder Interior Question

Just started tinkering around with RoG 1/48 B-26B Marauder and need answers to a couple of questions.

  1. What are the correct interior colors?
    Cockpit,bomb bay, wheel wells and aft section.

  2. A little tougher one…Is there a bulkhead between the bombadier and the pilot? In the kit you can look right through the bombadiers compartment and see the rudder pedals,rear of the instrument panel,pilots seat,ect.
    This doesn’t look quite right to me but of course I haven’t seen the real thing.

Anyone fortunate enough to have been inside of one?

Thanks! Steven

I have never built that specific kit, however i hae several kits for the B-25’s from Accurate Miniatures. They have Zinc Chromate intereiors while the bomb bay is Aluminum. The B-26 may have been painted in the same way. Sorry I can’t be of more help. take care.

Steven.
Check out http://www.swannysmodels.com/B26B.html
Swanny is a regular on this site and if you have any questions about anything in the article, just address a post to him. I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to assist in anyway he can.

Randie [C):-)]

Thanks for the plug Randie.

Steven, interior colors of green varied greatly during production depending on availibility. Production would not halt simply because the correct shade of green was not availible on any given day so this does give you, the modeler, some artistic lisence. Interior green, green zinc chromate and dark olive green are all acceptable for crew areas. Usually the bomb bay on a Marauder was bare metal aluminum. As far as the bulkhead between the pilot and bombadier there was not really a solid bulkhead but more of a series of structural supports that are lacking in the Revell kit. Follow the link that Randie gave you and look at some of the interior shots of the ESCI kit for a view of that part. Good luck - that Revell kit can be a bit of wrok.

I think the bombardier got into the nose by crawling over the co-pilot’s
rudder pedals. I won’t swear to it, though. I’m baseing it on this photo.

http://home.online.no/~alfjoha/B-26_Photoalbum.htm

Ray

Thanks for the replies. Nice website Swanny!
I see the bulkhead in front of the cockpit that monogram omitted. Oh well,out comes the plastic sheet!
Colorwise I was figuring the same thing; bomb bay area would be aluminum but the wing spars and the corrugated ceiling would be zinc chromate green along with most of the interior.

I tried building this kit years ago(original Flak Bait version) but because of impatience,youth and not so good fit it ended up in the scrap heap. I really like the subject and have always wanted one in my collection. I know this RoG is the same kit but I have been test fitting everything before applying cement and the fit seems to be a little better. I hope I can complete this one!
I’m going to build the one on the box art, “Idiots Delight” but substitute Aeromaster decals for the kit ones.
I hope that the landing gear can support all that weight(50g)??
Again, Thanks for all the help!
Steven

Thanks Ray!! That picture of the interior is GREAT! The way the model has it; the co-pilots seat slides back to provide access to the bombadier’s area.
Thanks again, I really appreciate your help!
Steven

You might find these sites useful:

http://www.webhome.idirect.com/~jproc/ve3fab/aircraft_radio_ops.html
http://aircraftwalkaround.hobbyvista.com/b26_marauder/b26_marauder.htm
http://www.b26.com/html/mm/01.htm
http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/URG/b26marauder.html (this one has a nice cockpit pic)
http://dragonslair.x-y.net/b26.htm
http://www.usaaf.com/aircraft/b26.htm (I think this one’s a South African bird)

I have built the same kit and was a gunner on one during the Korean thing. For the most part its plain old zinc chromate green. It used the same turrets ans the B29 and B50 the main difference was the sight, It was a periscopre affair you flipped the handles to look up or down. Most of the Korean war B26s had the solid nose with no bombadier . Just pilot copilot and gunner. If y memory serves correctly I think there were some 25 nose configurations.

At the Air and Space nuseum in DC, they’ve got the nose of “Flak Bait” on display in the WW II section. I think Monogram did a kit of this aircraft, does that ring a bell with any of you folk? If I remeber correctly, it was olive drab on the interior.

Can someone tell me what the exterior color(s) would have been or where to look? I assume that the interior was a light grey.

Here is a response I put in about a month ago to the exact same question. Sometimes you can get a bunch of info by just doing a search on what it is you are looking for by using the advanced feature next to the search button.

Looking at these photos, bare aluminum is pretty prevelent in the aircraft. The photographer states that the cockpit was mostly black. Seeing how this a NASM airplane, its probably right. In fact, I don’t think anything has been done to this plane restoration wise. Hope this helps.

http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com Go to the walk around section and click on B-26 Flakbait.

www.nasm.si.edu/nasm/garber/flakbait.htm This is the bulkhead that attaches to the front part shown in the other photos.

Hey pritty much any of these colors in any part of the aircraft are correct, because the interior colors were not standardised and it was usually different on about every other Marauder, And I know this for a fact because I ran into this exact same problem on my B-26, OliveDrab, Bare Metal, Zinc Cromate, Olive Green, and Deep Green.

The interior for the kit in the cockpit is correct, the bombader did have to crawl throught the co piolets position to get to his position. The only thing in the kit that I belive needed more detailing was the entire rear half of the bomber, I spent 3 months on the aft portion of it, due to the fact RG/Monogram only provided guns for the waist positions and tail position, so I added everything else that was not on the kit, Heres a good reference for the B-26, the book WarBird Tech, Volume 29, the B-26 Marauder.