Melgyver,
You’re welcome. I have a ton of reference on the B-17 but none it said how far forward the window had be moved. I’m lucky as there are a couple of B-17’s nearby to get good info off of.
Tony H.
Lemme know if’n ya need a vac-formed B-26 turret for the radio compartment…
The first attempt at this build was aborted. The more I got into the details (and with a lot of help from Melgyver) the more the G kit would not work for me. The windows were too large, the fit of the new fuselage section was bad as it was made for the F kit, the nose window arraignment was not going to work for the gunship version and the long nose glazing would not fit the G fuselage without narrowing the kit fuselage. I had already cut the top of the fuselage on the G kit but no matter, one half will be replaced in a later build with a clear fuselage half and the other can be repaired as I cut things carefully and saved the pieces. So now I am starting over with an old F kit. When I say old I mean OLD. This is something I picked up from Evil-Bay for a ten spot that someone else had started. They had assembled the fuselage and brush painted it with gobs of silver and lime green paint. I froze the fuselage, broke the glue joints (all orange tube Testors glue), did an inventory to confirm all parts present and accounted for then stripped the paint with Chameleon paint stripper (great stuff). So that’s the history up to this point, the pictures that follow should be pretty self explanatory.
Swanny,
It’s hard to tell in your photos but how does the aft opening of the ball turrent line up with the forward edge of your right window? I’s looking good! I wish I didn’t have so many “honey do’s” on top of my 174th AHC Reunion projects I would get back to work on my B-17. I might have to figure out a way to do some model building my week offshore.
Swanny,
That floor in the waist doesn’t look like any floor I’ve ever seen in a B-17. Is that part of the True Details set?
Tony H.
It would have to be beefed-up and flatter than a regular Fort’s since the twin waist guns at each station were, although flexible hand-helds, hydraulic-boosted mounts in order for the gunners to swing the 200+ pounds of guns & ammo in the wind…
Mel, there’s a little less than 1 rib of seperation between the forward edge of the window and the aft edge of the ball turret.
B299X - the base floor is from the True Details set.
Excellent stuff Matt. Is this beast heading for a total rescribe eventually?
…Guy
von Hammer,
It still doesn’t look like the photos I have of the YB-40’s waist position. The floor is still a plywood strip running from the crew door to the ball turret well.
The guns and their associated power boost systems were attached just below the window sills. The structure around the waist openings does show considerable strengthening.
My main point was that the floor that comes with the True Details set, intended for stock B-17’s, doesn’t look like any floor in a B-17 I have ever seen, or have a photo of.
This doesn’t mean it may not have exsisted and I would very interested in seeing a photo or a drawing of it. I’ve been looking at and researching B-17’s for a very long time. Now and again I learn something new about the '17 that I hadn’t known before. Maybe this is one of those times.
HTH
Tony H.
I was taking a SWAG (Scientific Wild-Azz Guess) at the floor detail set… Personally, I’ve never seen the inside of a YB-40 fuselage, just the gun mounts… Just a guess at why the detail set depicted it that way… If you got photos, I’d go with those instead… One thing that isn’t a guess… The guys that make detail sets aren’t always right, and they think that if one has a certain thing, then all the aircraft must have as well… If one were to take a look at the tail position of my uncle Ron’s B-17, he’d probably think that ALL B-17s had fleece-lined tail positions… Uncle Ron and another tail gunner “requisitioned” (his word) a bunch of old fleece-lined flight jackets and pants (rather gruesome detail, but the previous owners didn’t need them anymore, according to him) and lined their compartments with them for extra warmth…
von Hammer,
You’re exactly right about the after market people. They do their best but they may not have the affection for the subject and/or not the best references.
I did find a floor like the one in the True Details kit. But it was used in the XC-108A. The one off cargo conversion of the B-17E. At least when it was equipped as an air ambulance.
I read somewhere that “909” had the tail and ball turrets fleece lined. Was that your uncles plane? Or was it a squadron wide modification?
HTH
Tony H.
909 wasn’t, no… Same group though, 91st BG… I don’t know what squadron or aircraft… (Ron was one of 3 uncles I had in Forts, along with Bud and Stan, unfortunately, all have since passed) He made mention of the fleece lining way back when I was building the Monogram Fort the first time, back in the early 70s…
I just took a gander through
Flying Fortress, The Illustrated Biography of the B-17’s and the Men Who Flew Them
by Edward Jablonski, and other than a short paragraph on page 36 and a small side photo on page 40, there is nothing else listed.
But, if you are building a B-17, this book is invaluable!
Swanny,
This is just the opposite of a YB-40, the VIP version. I sure wish they would have gotten a tail number in there. My Dad is in the dark overalls at the waist window. Probably taken in Australia 1944 or Hollandia, New Guinea 1945. I would bet this had the “full” floor in it.
Shouldn’t be too hard to track it down as it is a general’s hack. So it would belong to either 5th AF, 7th AF, or 13th AF, I believe. There weren’t that many B-17’s in the Pacific at that time. The greater number would be SB-17’s with the lifeboat. I will look in my copy of Dana Bell’s “Air Force Colors: PTO” to see if I can find it. I’m not up on Pacific history compared to 8th AF B-17’s as my uncle was in the 303rd BG, 427th BS, as a flight engineer, with 20 missions, and 5 with the Pathfinders, and then spent '44 and '45 shuttling B-17’s to the Caribbean, for transfer to Europe.
I don’t think the TD floor is accurate either and may do some correction there, and may not - depends on what is visible with the fuselage closed up.
My dad saw a General’s VIP B-17 come in to Henderson Field after the war. He said there was an office installed in the bomb bay area. Guess that could add new meaning to ‘disgruntled employee’, eh? I’ll have to look through his pictures and see if he took and shots of it. I had totally forgotten about this until this was posted here - thanks for jogging my memory.
Melgyver/Swanny
Seeing that VIP B-17 gave me something of a shock and got me wondering. My Dad
went overseas in WWII with the 22nd Bomb Group (M) in early 1942 and stayed overseas until
August of 1945. After the war, my Dad became the flight engineer for the Commanding
General of the 20th AF. General Stearly had a VIP B-17. What I remember best (I was 5
years old) was when the General would come back to Kadena from a trip, he would take me and
my Brother by the hand and walk us out to the airplane and into the opened bomb bay where
the radio operator would pull us up into the airplane and we would get to ride it back to the
hard stand. I would sit on my Dad’s lap and think I was taxiing the airplane because I was
playing with the yoke while he was dealing with brakes and throttles.
Thanks for the memory
Ray
Sorry Swanny,
Have to give Ray another little “shock”. I know the 22nd BG were the first B-26 Marauder in the Southwest Pacific. Here are a few of Dad’s pic’s. He developed and printed them himself is the reason for the poor quality. He was initially assigned to the 81st Air Depot Group in Brisbane, Australia.
Shot of them painting out the early red and white tail fin stripes. You can see the yellow “tail number” on the side of the fuselage.
Shot taken from early P-40 of B-26 taking off.
Early B-26 stripped of paint, may have been used for a “run about” aircraft. Sorry, don’t have a clue of any dates on these except probably 1943.
Melgyver,
I’m loving it. My Dad carried a 16mm Bolex movie camera around with him complete
with Kodachrome film. We had the film restored and now have it on DVD. It’s a
couple of hours worth of some of the garden spots of the SWPA.
That unpainted (NMF) B-26 probably belonged to the 22nd’s 19th Bomb Squadron
aka “The Silver Fleet”. My Father joined the 22nd at Langley Field in '39 or’40.
He’s still around and mean as ever. He retired from the AF as a Chief Master Sargent
in 1966.
Thanks again
Ray
Great subject! Even though they weren’t very successful, I 've always loved seeing all those guns bristling out of the YB-40. I have a bunch of interior shots of the Collings Foundation B-17G that may be of help.
Here is the tail gear strut from inside the plane looking towards the tail.
Oxygen mask just forward of left waist gun position.
Top of the ball turret.
View looking toward rear from above the ball turret
And a couple from the Thunderbird in Texas:
