The B-47 is one of those airplanes that has always been one of my favorites, both elegant in appearance and one of the major milestones in the history of aircraft design. Over 1500 were built, and besides politics it may have been what made the Air Force give up on the YB-49, since it had the same range and was 100 mph faster. I used the Pavla resin cockpit and engine sets, which also provide a vacuform canopy. The kit canopy has major coke bottle disease. The decals are crocodiled from the years the kit has been in my stash, so Microscale decals were used. I would not use the resin engine set again as it made little improvement and had fit problems. The resin cockpit and vacuform canopy were well worth the effort. A resin set was used to drop the flaps, which required cutting the wings appropriateley in the flap area. The set was very fragile and needed a lot of work to get rid of layering marks from the printing process.
Not a quick build but just one of those subjects that has to be in my collection. I made decal strips to frame the canopy.
It’s a beaut John, so nicely built and finished. One of my favorite airplanes also, one of those that just “looked right,” elegant and yet purposeful. Thanks for the post and photos.
That came out well, John. I personally thought that the kit was a pig with all of the early Hasegawa problems such as ambivalent location clues for joins.
The 47 was a good looking aircraft. There was a squadron of them at Little Rock at one time. I heard that one crashed near the base and when I was there they had a nose of one near the wrecked B-58 near the burn pit.
Actually one blew up after take off over Little Rock in the late 50s. They suffered quite a few wing failures in flight.
Beautiful job on the ancient Hasegawa kit. I have considered doing the same when the resin cockpit came out, but still hoping for a new kit in 1/72 scale.
Great work John. Your NMF looks fabulous.[t$t] I sure wish there was some special ops ‘vietnam’ version of this a/c, sorta like the ap-2h with some neat camo… [;)]
I know a S.E.A. camouflage pattern was drawn up (though never used) for the B-58 Hustler – one presumes, since the official retirement date for the B-47 was around 1969, that a similar contingency might have been drawn up for the Stratojet. Might be out there on the 'net, somewhere.
(I’ve seen pictures of Hustler models done in camouflage…don’t recall having seen any B-47 models in similar nick.)
