Making a Marauder Ready

[rtfoe]

Hi Everyone,
Even before I ventured into dio and 1/35 armour I built planes and have always wanted one on a diorama. So you could say this is one of my earliest dios that has survived and is in my stash of images. I'd like to share them with you. You will notice that it is devoid of figures and has one of my first scratch built fuel trucks (a ficticious one) built on a Morris chassis.



If you're wondering what kit it is ...it's a Matchbox kit. I still didn't know the system of decalling with pre varnishing and sealing so to counter the silvering I cut away the decal carrier film as mush as I could.



Hope you like it.

Cheers,
Richard

 

[minitnkr]

One of my favorite aircraft. Well done. PaulE

 

[rtfoe]

Hi Paul...sorry for the late reply. Thank you. The Marauder has one of the nices streamlined shapes for a WW2 medium range bomber. Sadly early in its career it was labelled the Widowmaker but made up for it as one of the lowest loss rate of any USAAF bomber by the end of the war.

Cheers,
Richard

 

[minitnkr]

Yeah, a landing speed that was the max speed of your trainer was hard to get your head around. Built for speed by aeronautical hot rodders w/ not much thought for the effects of flak on highly loaded wings. PaulE

 

[Fernando N]

Great looking dio Richard, one of my favorite aircraft too, you just gotta love the streamlined shape.

Fernando

 

[rtfoe]

Thanks Paul and Fernando...I've gotta build another one of this. Got one 1/48 Monogram in my stash. May need new decals so will start a search.

Cheers,
Richard

 

[flyjoe180]

Beautiful work for an ancient kit Richard. Interesting that the decals have remained stuck on despite the majority of their carrier film being removed.

Re the B-26 approach speed, that's still only about 110 knots, not very fast at all. I guess if you're used to chunky wings with low wing-loading then that's a bit of a difference from a tame trainer.

 

[minitnkr]

I believe the initial recommended landing speed of 120 to 135mph was upped to 140 to150mph depending on load before the wings were lengthened due to losses in training. Being designed in the 30s this was pretty fast. The B-25 Mitchel's was 93mph and the A-20 Havoc's was 95. PaulE

 

[flyjoe180]

Thanks Paul. I think we tend to forget many of these early aircraft were at the edge of technology and much was yet to be learned. Sounds like they got it sorted in the end.

Back to the build Richard, the chipping you've achieved, was that with achieved with silver paint or pencil? I think it's quite well done in particular.

 

[rtfoe]

Hi Joe, at the time I didn't even know colour pencils could be used. Basically stippled with paint brush and toned down with a misting of thinned wash.

Cheers,
Richard