Hello I got these to models off of ebay, the Mongram model was the “Big Bad & Beautiful” series. The AMT B52H model does seem to have some improvment over the older monogram kit. D model comes with 24 bombs (Think there 500lbers?) while the H model comes with 12 Cruise Missile’s. The flight deck’s are very differn’t between the to, D model is really small while the H model has more detail.
( D model come in on half, while H is split into to parts)
(H model flight deck, D model flight deck, still doing some painting)
Looks like you are having fun, Field Marshall. One thing to plan ahead for is the diherdral on the H kit. As they made it the wings will have the upward bend as if it is in flight, so for on the gear you’ll want to work on that so the outriggers rest near or on the same level as the main gear.
Fully fueled and ready for take off, the BUFFs wings drooped enough that the outrigger wheels touched the ground. When returning from a mission and nearly out of fuel, they were several feet off of the ground, although still drooped from the “in flight” position.
Imagine the force needed to lift that wing. It’s carrying a full fuel load, including the wing tank and 12 750 pound bombs under the wing. That’s a lot of weight.
It’sa shame you don’t have a “G” model. You could have them side by side waiting to go on a bombing mission to North Vietnam.
Looks to me like the AMT in a walkoff. I hated the Revell BUFF, big open wheel wells, bent wings, no cockpit, blahh blahh. I’ve got a million iron bombs to give away from that one, as I built mine as the “Strangelove” “Leper Colony” (yes, never stated in the movie and an obvious homage to another earlier movie).
Strangelove other trivia- what a/c is the shadow on the snow of in the final bomb run?
The deployed drag chute definately says that BUFF is on a landing roll out. That means very little fuel on board and NO bombs. If a fully fueled and bomb laden BUFF had to abort shortly after take off, they COULD NOT LAND because of being overweight. They could jettison the bombs, but the BUFF can not dump fuel, (excuse me, adjust gross weight), so it had to fly around for several hours and burn off fuel before it could land.
Well made a trip to my LHS, and picked up some Zinc Chromate along with another spray can of Gunship Gray. Now for the paint scheme I’m going with for the D model is as on the box, Semi-Gloss Black, A light sea blue, Dark green. On the box from the kit there model has a light blue or more like sea blue as one of the colors, and looking around the internet I found some model’s did have light blue. So I’m going along with that, not if anybody says else wise. For the H model I’m going with an over all GunShip Gray, the markings for this kit(You can ether bulid one from the 80’s, or 90’s) the one from the 90’s it says it was the last 52 to roll off the production line, don’t know if thats true. (The tail number is 61-040) Only down side is the tail gunner for the D model’s windsheld is missing.
Look at the wings on this one. It’s starting to take off.
Hung bombs was a fairly common occurance. If the ship could not drop its bombs in one of the designated safe zones they had to bring them in. When we got the notice we had to close down the roads at both ends of the runways.
We had one come in from the ocean end, touch down, pop his drag chute and I watched as the chute pack just dropped out without deploying. The aircraft ended up using the entire runway plus more. They finally stopped after using the overrun, going through the barbed wire, past a bunker, and ending on the closest maintennence road to the runway. Somehow the bombs stayed on the aircraft. There was always the danger that the bombs would fall and detonate as had happened in the past.
The S.E.A. pattern is tan, medium green, darker green, and gloss black. If you want I can post the pattern from my copy of the Air Force T.O. 1-1-4 for painting aircraft.
