Getting down to the tiny details on my 1/72 B-25B, being done as one of Doolittle’s Raiders (still haven’t decided which one), and I have conflicting photo evidence about how the dorsal gun turret should be painted - some of the photos indicate that the interior bracing you can see on the molded clear plastic part was clear, but some seems to show it was painted, as in exterior bracing or framing. None of the Doolittle Raider photos I have been able to find have been any help; they all show the turret covered because they were taken on the Hornet.
For most of the WWII Bombers the top turrets had a blown plexiglass bubble with a clear frame work, this was to give the gunner the best visiual profile then if it was framed like the Boeing’s B-17’s, Martin Co. & Alco designed the best turrets for most of the Allied Bombers, Sperry also did turrets but they where more of the remote type & the most famous was their Ball Turret on the belly of the Fort’s & Libby’s, but of all the Martin Co.'s was the most produced it was in the A-20G-K’s, B-24’s, B-26’s, B-32’s, and the Martin Baltimore’s & Maryland’s, as with the PB4Y’s, I don’t know who built the early B-25’s turrets but they too had the clear Blown type bubble unlike it’s later siblings which they where armour plated and metal framed so you would be correct if you did not paint the frame work on the turret (if your doing the early version of the Mitchell)
Thanks for that! A relief, actually - one less thing to screw up, I mean paint, because I’m doing a B-25B model Doolittle Raider.
mfsob;
if you go to www.airpirates.com they just pulled a B-25C out of Murry lake it’s about 95% there and they have a couple of excellent photo’s of the turrets plexiglas dome
The link below from my home page will show you some details from the WW II B-25C and D Maintenance Manual of the upper turret dome and interior mechanism. There is actually some narrow framing around the slots for the guns and the gunsight, and also visible on the model would be the gun shields which move when the guns elevate to keep the air blast down. The manual does not say who made the turrets, upper or lower.
Thanks for that link! What I have been able to find to date, though, indicates that for the B model, the turret was completely clear. Anyway, after the, ummm, hell of trying to mask off and paint the bombadier’s greenhouse and cockpit canopy, I made the executive decision that the top turret is going to stay pristine.
Whatever’s fun for you is the right way. If you try to make everything as the prototype was you can only fail. It’s just too hard to imprint the spark plug maker’s name, and the B-25 would need to have that done 56 times!
The enormous amount of framed glass on a B-25 is one reason I thank the lord every time I reach into my massive box full of Eduard Tamiya-tape, precut masks. And they make an especially nice set for the B-25 you’re building, though I know it’s too late for you, since it would probably have to be mail ordered – LHS’s rarely carry many of these masks, if any at all.
Of course, it wouldn’t be fair to mention the Eduard yellow-tape masks without a plug for the great stuff put out by EZ Mask. They are made of vinyl, the advantage of which is that if you have slight fit problem, you can use a dull wood stick, such as a cuticle stick, to push or pull the mask exactly to the frame line. And I’ve never had the slightest paint creep under an EZ Mask. Another neat thing about EZ Mask is that the stickum on the bottom, if accidentally wetted, rather than being ruined, simply sticks that much tighter. Some people wet their EZ Masks as a rule, though I use them simply right off the backing paper. EZ Mask also makes every conceivable shape and size of mask for any type of pattern you may be contronted with, as well as a large line geometric shapes, airliner windows and super-thin stripes, plus numbers, letters and national insignia. There’s nothing that beats painted-on squadron codes and national insignia to make a model look more authentic.
TOM