I just wrapped up work on this ancient Hasegawa kit of the B-47E Stratojet.
This is a relatively recent boxing, but the mold goes back to the late 1960s. And as such, the kit shows its age. There is absolutely no detail for the interior of this bomber. There are a couple of pilots and ejection seats, but no console or IP detail, not even decals as one typically finds. But the ridiculously thick canopy part obscures 99.9% of what you can see in the cockpit, so I didn’t worry myself over that issue.
Fit is so-so. I believe it is intended to be built wheels-down, but since mine was intended to “fly” alongside the Monogram B-36 on my workshop ceiling, I had a good fight on my hands to align the gear doors to be somewhat flush with the surrounding fuselage plastic. I didn’t take any photos of the underside, but I was able to mostly get the gear doors (and bomb bay doors as well) flush. The underside is just not very photogenic IMO. The wing gear doors were truly awful - no locator pins or indications of how they should be affixed into “in flight” mode.
Paints are Tamiya white, Tamiya lacquer flat black, Tamiya lacquer flat red, and AK Interactive XTreme Metals - matte aluminum, dark aluminum, white aluminum, jet exhaust, and gun metal.
And here is the 72nd Stratojet along with the Academy 1/144 Stratojet I built many years ago, as a first attempt at using foil to do the NMF.
I’ve been wondering why Monogram did not choose to kit this bomber. They did the -36 and -52 in 72nd scale. Seems like this one would have been a good choice. Heck, they could have done this one in 48th.
Thank you Eugene! I actually watched that old Jimmy Stewart movie while building this Stratojet. The kit instructions are woefully inadequate to presenting a complete picture of how this aircraft looked, so I put that movie (which I consider a classic and a definitive look at not only the Stratojet, but also the Peacemaker) on to help fill in some gaps in those instructions.
Stephen, you beat me. It looks great. I’ll be able to replicate your photo because I’ve also built the 1/144 kit, in the same scheme but of course gear down. I generally don’t want anyone flying my airplanes but me!
I’ve been working on the same kit for several months, adding 3d printed extended flaps, and the Pavla cockpit and engine parts that also include a vac canopy. The engine parts were not enough improvement to be worth the work, but I’m happy with the cockpit. I fitted the bomb bay doors before I joined the fuselage halves and will be building it gear down.
Great job! In fact, as I was reading your post and had your first pic at the bottom of my screen-I thought it was an actual aircraft photo until I looked closer!
Built it many years ago. I had access to a B-47 on display at Little Rock AFB so detailed the wheelwheels and found a few references in some books at college on the cockpit details. Would absolutely love a new, modern 1/72 scake kit of this aircraft.
Given that this one is just about as big as the Monogram 1/48 B-17G, I don’t have shelf space for displaying one this big, so wheels up she is.
I found someone’s blog relating building this kit, where the builder scratched out an entire cockpit, complete with the seat (navigator?) that is in the literal nose of the Stratojet. It was impressive work, but for the life of me I couldn’t imagine going through all of that given that none of it is visible. The kit does not include the windows that are right there at the top of the nose (I think there are “panel” lines where the windows should be), so unless you cut those out and put in clear styrene, you’d never know there was a guy in there.
