Anybody out there a fan of the B-57 or RB-57? I’d be interested in looking at any photos of a completed kit. Also, if you are a fan, what drew you to this plane?
Here is one by an exceptionally skilled modeler … Fotios Rouch http://www.features02.kitparade.com/b57bfr_1.htm
and here is a review of a 1/144 kit by Brett Green http://kits.kitreview.com/b57breviewbg_1.htm
and a 1/72 canberra kit review http://kits.kitreview.com/canberramk20reviewme_1.htm
and then there is Aeroclub’s 1/48 vac kit … http://www.kitparade.com/features01/canberrab6jf_1.htm
go to this site http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/ click gallery and look for canberra or b-57 there for several kits
I have always had a certain fascination with the long winged RB-57F because it was in direct competition with SR-71 and U-2 aircraft that I worked with. The old TAC versus SAC business.
Darwin, O.F. [alien]
I recently became a fan of the B-57 after running across a photo of an Arkansas ANG B-57B in some very interesting markings. Turns out in my research that I also came across photos of an Arkansas ANG RB-57A as well. Have bought both the Airfix Canberra Mk. 2 (I think) kit to convert to a RB-57A and the Testors B-57B, but have yet to do anything yet but collect more reference material and photos. Highly recommend Robert Mikesh’s B-57 book from Schiffer Publishing and the B-57 Association website at http://www.b-57canberra.org
Also, Airfix magazine Vol. 1, No. 12 contain a slew of articles of B-57 conversions. A fellow IPMS member sent photocopies of the articles to me after I had posted an inquiry on the IPMSUSA.org web site.
My dad was with the 4677th (later 17th) DSES so I got to be really close to this plane in the EB-57 version. Plane was just beautiful to watch fly.
I have a couple of these kits to make, just got to get the right conversion kit.
Lots of good pics of the Cranberry here
http://www.b-57canberra.org/
Hello all! I am new to the forum.
I have an old vacuform kt of the RB-57F. It has almost no instructions and very few parts. I have another kit to complete it. But need much info such as a picture of the outside of the engines. I would also like a picture of the intakes.
As to why I like B-57’s, I don’t know but I have a box full of them in kits. I buy them whenever I see them.
I have just chopped the nose off of an Italeri B57 in preparation for the Canberra B2 conversion.
If anyone needs the nose, contact me.
I spent a little time in the Air Force (24 years), and as a modeler, I always visited the Wing Historian to see what types of aircraft had been flown by the unit before, and dig up some neat old pics. Well, when I ended up at Shaw AFB, SC, I came across a couple of nice shots of an all black RB-57 with red and white checkerboard on the tail. The high gloss black paint combined with the colorful tail markings did it for me. I have my Falcon vacufomed 1/48 (R)B-57 in work at this time.
Do you have those pictures and if so can you post them?
What’s not to love. I saw my first B-57 at Rantoul IL, Shanute AFB. The base is one of those that has been closed due to budget cuts.
Anyways, it was a Canberra, I think if I remember right it was designated a B-57-A. It had the “blister” type canopy, and not the tandem seat bubble top of the B model. It was gloss black with the red markings. It was just so neat and impressive.
Later when I got to see a Marten built B version, with the tandem seat bubble top, I was hooked. That’s the way a B-57 should look.
I got to watch the earlier mentioned A model start up and it is very unnerving. It uses some sort of starting canister that creats a heck of a lot of smoke. I thought the thing was on fire.
The gloss black aircraft are the neatest looking, but the silver with international orange birds look good to. The SEATO camoflage just does not do anything for the aircraft, as far as I’m concerned.
This aircraft is high on my list of “wants” for a 1/48th scale injection molded kits. I still have a couple of the old Revell “box scale” kits of the B-57-B, as well as the airfix, matchbox, and the Italieri/Testors kits. Come on RM do your stuff!
She is a good looking old bird, and as I stated at the beginning, “whats not to love”?
Back home in Houston I used to watch the WB-57F’s come and go out of the NASA base at Ellington Field, their crew members wearing space suits for their very high-altitude missions. I was also wondering if each time I saw them would be the last, since they were the last American Canberra’s flying, and they are so modified they are almost unrecognizable as B-57’s with their huge long wings and gigantic turbofan engines and tall tails. But I love the Canberra, and I love those NASA WB-57’s. And guess what? It wasn’t the '57 that went. It was the NASA ER-1’s (their version of the U-2 used for high altitude research such as partical gathering).
The NASA Canberra’s are back in business and if you go here:
http://jsc-aircraft-ops.jsc.nasa.gov/wb57/index.html
you will see that big ugly/beautiful beast in all its refurbished glory. It even tells you how to prepare your instrument package if you want to buy flight time. Let me see if I can find you a walk around with some details on a military B-57B.
Try this one:
http://www.b-57canberra.org/index.htm
And this one:
http://s96920072.onlinehome.us/AWA1/201-300/walk290_B-57/walk290.htm
Now, will someone please give us a big, beautiful B-57B in 1/48? Or one of the original B-57A’s would be fine by me. The only ones I don’t find so lovely are the British marks with the canopy offset to one side. I don’t know the designation.
But in truth, all of them are lovely, and not many people are aware of just how aerobatic they are, but they’ll roll and loop better than any big airplane you ever saw.
And, if anyone ever finds a copy of the out-of-print book “Doom Pussy” (The squadron nickname), about some of the first USAF Canberras to go to Vietnam (it was written in about 1968 by a female reporter who actually went along on missions), jump on it. It is very rare indeed and I’d love to find a new copy for myself.
And please, don’t ever forget about the brave Aussies who flew their Canberras into harm’s way in the same war we were fighting in Vietnam.
TOM
Some nice links Tom. Thanks for posting.
Regards, Rick
Doom Pussy and Doom Pussy II are both available on Amazon. The second volume gets rave reviews (like the first). Thanks for pointing me to this one.
I’ve built two B-57 Canberra’s , They were Airfix kits no. 5018 . The first kit was an RB-57E version , airbrushed black all-over [to go with my other Vietnam Era aircraft] , A nice simple kit to build , doesn’t have an open bomb bay , but the wing flaps are positionable . The second one I made as a EB-57B Electronic aircraft , I just added a few blade antener’s under the belly . Airbrushed ADC Gray over-all with an orange nose , tail fin and wing tip’s . I have a book called Fighter Interceptors 'america’s cold war defenders ’ , So I got the idea of a differant color scheme from picture’s in the book. If anyone could explain a simple way of including photo’s on this Forum site , I would be happy show my two B-57 Canberra’s . … Kind Regards John .
Thank YOU. I didn’t know there was a sequal. That’s one of the great forgotten Vietnam memoirs, though it’s more of a diary of the squadron, with some great stories, like the Canberra that kept flying after the crew ejected. They tried to shoot it down with the 20 mm’s in the wings of another B-57B, but it kept flying straight and level with no crew until it ran out of gas over the South China Sea. One tough bird, it was. The B models were used for “road recce” early in the Vietnam conflict, and later as night intruders. But road recce early in that war was done just like it was with the A/B-26 Invaders in the Korean war. Just fly down the roads and bomb and strafe anything that was rolling or walking suspiciously. The last Canberra’s in Vietnam were the G models, and they were modified into one of the ugliest machines ever to take flight with their old fashioned (1969 state of the art) electronics in the noses, looking like someone had welded locomotive to the nose. These were in SEA camo with black undersides and there may still be conversion kits out there for that version in resin, as well as for the RB-57D. These fit the 1/72 Italeri/Testors B-57B kit. You might find them on evilBay.
And, BTW, there are two or three of 1:1 B-57’s listed on the active US civilian warbird registry, though they mostly are used, I understand, for military contract work. But I saw one of them once in a hangar and it was painted in the “raspberry ripple” scheme of the RAF’s flight test birds. I sure would like to have had a ride in that beaut.
Also, if you ever see that often-shown documentary on the Science Channel about weather modification, you’ll catch a peek at a civilian Canberra seeding clouds.
TOM
Hi jayzee!
I just entered the forum yesterday. I think the B-57 is cool. I build 1/72 scale. I have not examined the Revell or Airfix kits of the Canberra but have built the Italari B-57 G Nighthawk. It is an excellent kit. (Most Italari kits are pretty good).
Here is a repost pic of the one I built.
Here is also link to my Fotki album (very small % of my aircraft are in there)
http://public.fotki.com/normargab/172_scale_aircraft/gunthers_scale_mode/
gunther
I also have a good link for the English version.
http://www.bywat.co.uk/canframes.html
Try http://www.b-57canberra.org/
It shows this scheme on the home page.
I may need a reference book on these. What would be the best overall ?