B-25B Doolittle Raider

by Tory Mucaro

 HyperScale is proudly supported by Squadron.com

This is Accurate Miniatures' B-25B Doolittle Raider.

I built this model for a private collector to his specifications. I received the kit from him along with both Verlinden and Aries aftermarket parts. The kit clear parts were missing and a set of vacuum formed replacements from Falcon of New Zealand was included.

I followed the instructions along with the Accurate Online Build. Let me qualify what I’m about to say by saying that I have been building scale models for 35 years, have won a national competition, and have been a professional model maker for the last 23 years. That said, I would never attempt to build this kit without following the instructions!

This was, by far, the most difficult aircraft kit I’ve ever built. After 20+ hours of work, I still had not yet closed the fuselage halves. I was sure to photograph the highly detailed interior before assembling the fuselage, because all that detail is almost impossible to see afterwards.

The rest of the kit went together pretty much like any other contemporary WWII aircraft kit. Overall, the detail is beautiful and I was very impressed with the way the wings assembled to the fuselage, nicely engineered. The vacuum formed clear parts were a little tricky, and gave me a lot of trouble during painting. I like to assemble all the clear parts before painting, and then mask them off with Parafilm. However, it’s pretty hard to press the Parafilm down firmly on such flimsy parts. The nose glass came loose several times during this process, but I eventually got it to stick.

The model is finished predominately in Model Master enamels. The upper surfaces are Olive Drab with Faded Olive over spray and Faded Olive on the fabric control surfaces. The underside is Neutral Gray lightened with Flat Insignia White. I’ve always found using Neutral Gray straight from the jar to look too dark, so I like to lighten it to help create some contrast between the upper and lower colors. I had trouble trying to determine if the color demarcation was hard or soft on these aircraft, I opted for soft for aesthetic reasons only. I then over coated the model with Model Master Gloss Lacquer prior to decaling.

I used the excellent kit supplied decals, which went on without a hitch using the Miroset/Microsol system. After the decals had dried for 24 hours, I over coated the entire model with Model Master Clear Flat lacquer. It was then weathered with Floquil Grimy Black and an airbrush, pastels, Tester Steal for the paint chips (Aluminum always looked to bright for this purpose) and Dark Gray colored pencil for accentuating the control surfaces.

The carrier deck section is from Just Plane Stuff and comes with some very helpful painting instructions as well as website information on the Doolittle Raid. I used custom mixed Tamiya paints to finish the deck.

Overall, this was a somewhat tough project, but the end result turned out okay. The collector was very pleased with it, which when you build professionally, is really the goal in the first place!

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images:

Model, Images and Text Copyright © 2002 by Tory Mucaro
Page Created 29 October, 2002
Last Updated 04 June, 2007

Back to HyperScale Main Page

Back to Features Index