Okay, so I’ve finally finished the radio room, waist gunner’s area, and cockpit on my 1:48 B-17F- almost all scratchbuilt. It’s the biggest project I’ve ever undertaken, and I’m almost finished with the interior. But before that happens, I need a few questions answered:
1: what caliber machine guns should be mounted in the cheek windows?
2: should these have the ammo boxes mounted to them or have belts running to boxes elsewhere?
3: Where are the ammo boxes for the nose mounted (field mod) guns? should it be one box or two?
4: What type should the waist gun ammo boxes be, and where/how are should they be mounted?
and finally, any other facts/info on the interior layout of the B-17F that you have would be greatly appreciated.
I haven’t seen a photo of the .50 cal. cheek guns using ammo boxes, just belt fed guns.
The drawings that I have show the left cheek gun ammo box mounted above the window aft of the cheek position, butting up against the bulkhead of the pilots compartment and the right cheek gun box mounted on the floor below the gun.
The ammo boxes for the waist guns were mounted aft of the waist windows. I don’t know if you are using the B-17G kit as a basis for your 17F, if you are you could use the ammo boxes provided if you turn them 90 degrees so the long side is up.
The only thing I can think to add is that, IMHO, most B-17’s waist gun positions seem to be unpainted. I’m sure I’ll stir up a little debate with that, but that’s what it looks like to me in most of the photos I have access to.
First , you have to know what specific model you are building. Go this this website to see the specific serial number you are going to model: http://home.att.net/~jbaugher/usafserials.html. With B-17F’s, there were three manufacturer’s, Boeing, Douglas, and Lockheed-Vega. Each manufacturer introduced different modifications at different times during production. This called the block system.This started with a B-17F-1BO (Boeing). DL was Douglas built and VE was a Vega built bird. The chin turret F was F-100BO. A cheap reference is the Squadron B-17 paperback book. Sorry I can’t remember the complete name but you can find it at Squadron .com or other modeling sources.
Yeah, I’ve got both the Walk-around and the in-action books, and they have both been a big help, but they don’t cover some areas too well, hence my posts…