I remember the April Fool's article with the P-47s in it, and loved
it! Got a real hoot out of the concept, even if they goofed up
and used the wrong commanding general for the date listed in the
"orders". Perils of being an historian as well as a modeler - you
notice fairly trivial stuff like that.
As to the panel lines on
the B-2 model, I actually don't have any problem with them. That
is because they are not really "panel lines" in the sense that we
normally think of. That is, they are not spaces in between
seperate sections of metal, or in this case composite, skin
material. That is after all what panel lines are - the almost
invisible joint between two sections of aluminum that have been
fastened to the frame of the aircraft. As aircraft have become
more streamlined and faster, those seams have gotten smaller and
smaller, to the point where you have to be almost on top of the real
machine to even spot them on modern combat aircraft. Which makes
all those models of modern military aircraft with all these highly
visible panel lines even less realistic than the ones on older planes.
Anyway,
back to the B-2. The B-2 has no "panel lines" in the traditional
sense, as the entire surface of the aircraft is a single piece of the
carbon fiber composite - that is one reason the plane is so darned
expensive. The skin is essentially one single piece, with some
small cutouts for access hatches and such. The "panel lines" on a
B-2 are in fact similar to stenciling, only in this case they are
deliberately created in the skin of the B-2 itself by lightening
selected portions of the surface, since they cannot use paint on it at
all. They are put there to indicate where things like framing,
hatches, and other important internal parts of the airplane are -
information which is often essential when doing maintenance. Even
the national insignia are "molded" into the skin. Since the
overall color of the B-2 is a dark gray, these essential markings are
crafted in a lighter gray for contrast, without being too
obvious. So the light gray "panel lines" on the model are
in fact completely accurate, and can be verified by any good close up
of the real plane.
But I agree that panel lines on a great many
recent aircraft models are over-sized and over-emphasized. The
over-sized part is probably inevitable, given that modelers want panel
lines on their kits, and if the companies were to make them to
realistic scale, they would be so fine and insignificant that they
would be effectively invisible. But this trend to emphasize the
panel lines, to in effect shout "look at these seams!" on the finished
product, is our fault as builders. We do it because we want
people to notice what we've built, and this is a good way to draw
attention to the finished product while still being "subtle" and
"realistic".
As an example of what I mean by scaling up to show
the real size of panel lines, consider this. I attempted to
measure the depth of some panel lines on some of my 1/48 kits.
Not entirely successful, as most of the parts are still in the plastic
bags, and my smallest unit of measuring only goes down to 1/32 of an
inch, but based on that, I'm guessing that most of the panel lines on
the best, most recent kits are only about 1/100 of an inch deep -
perhaps even less, but bear with me. That seems pretty darn tiny,
and is very hard to see as well - which is probably why we tend to
consider them "delicate" and "in-scale". But scale them up to
full size, and what do you get? A gouge in the skin of the plane
that is approximately one half in deep and one half inch wide.
Now that's a real trench! Even if you reduce the depth of the
model's panel line to 1/200 of an inch deep, it still scales up to
almost 1/4 of an inch deep and wide, which I'm sure anyone who has ever
seen the real airplanes would admit is enormously bigger than the real
thing. Or do it the other way - measure the width and depth of
real panel lines on real airplanes, and then scale them down. Not
so easy to do, but still yields some impressive numbes, I'm sure.
There
is a certain amount of the "Scale Effect" at work here. If the
panel lines are to be seen at all on such a small model (they almost
certainly would not be seen if you simply took a real plane and shrank
it down to scale size) they must be oversized, and because the model is
so small, you can get away with making them too large because they are
still almost too tiny to be noticed.
The only evidence I've
ever seen in photographs of actual planes of panel lines being
noticeable is in areas around the engine, cooling, and hydraulic areas
of the plane. These areas all leak some sort of fluids, which
tend to accumulate in even the smallest cracks. These fluids then
collect airborne dust and become dark and rather gunky. So even
if most of the panel lines on a P-51 should be virtually invisible, the
ones on the forward fuselage can legitimately have some subtle emphasis
to them. This is especially the case with removable panels used
to access the engine, as they tend to have just a tiny bit more space
between them than other permanently fixed panels, and also because the
act of removing them provides extra opportunity for oil and other gunk
to get into the cracks.
I suppose my guiding principle for panel
lines and all other forms of weathering is "what does the historical
record say?" What can you find in pictures of the real thing, and
how can you then duplicate that efffect? You can certainly find
some examples of pretty extreme weathering - I've seen pictures of
German fighters and Stukas in winter white paint schemes with virtually
the entire fuselage covered with dark black engine exhaust
staining. But I really do wish people would stop applying various
artistic painting and weathering techinques in the name of "realism"
without bothering to verify that the efffect is in fact realistic.