B-29- What paint scheme should I use?

FWIW, I favor the black underside, black sides, black vertical fin with aluminum uppers used by the Air Force's special operations unit in Korea, the 581st Air Resupply and Communications Wing.

I'd also suggest doing the XB-29 (41-002) Eddie Allen flew.  On delivery it was unarmed and had 3-bladed propellers and NOT the usual 4-bladed ones. (Ref. to the "The Boeing B-29 Superforteress" Profile #101 from Profile Publications).  Would this aircraft have been OD/gray since it was such an early version or all aluminum?

Given the trend, how long before Trumpeter kits a 1/48 B-29?

Oh, man... I can see the price tag on THAT one already... 150.00 bucks if it's a dime... Have be outta m' mind to buy that one...

Or have to eat Ramen for a month... But that's another thread..

Hans von Hammer wrote:

Yeah, the balls are Sperry turrets, the top look like the Martin Electrics.

According to the book, the upper turrets are indeed Martins.

Given the trend, how long before Trumpeter kits a 1/48 B-29?

After putting some thought to it, this is a plane that would benefit from one of the odd scales. The 1/48 and 1/72 take up to much space (the Academy B-50 sits and waits in my stash) to acquire a collection, whereas 1/144 is too tiny to really work some magic with details on. It would be a real nice kit in 1/90 or 1/100 scale.

Moon Puppy wrote:

They look like regular Spurry turrets on the bottom, not sure about the top turrets, same as the B24 maybe? The two cheek turrets, gives a new meaning to a Mae West.

Yeah, the balls are Sperry turrets, the top look like the Martin Electrics.  I do know that there's a resin Martin turret available (or there was anyway) that came in a 1/48th detail set for the Monogram A-26 out there somewhere, I bought it some years ago for a planned (but never started) B-17-to-YB-40 conversion... 

Also, if you ever want to do a Superfort dio with the turret being serviced, the Monogram P-61 used the same turret as the Super Fortress.  In fact, that's part of the reason (besides the buffeting issue) that some production blocks of Widows were fielded without turrets; they were needed for B-29 production.

Lucien Harpress wrote:

...-Olive drab over Neutral Gray YB-29.  Seeing as how only 8 of these were ever made, it's not a scheme you see too oten.  I don't know what conversions would be necissary to backdate it, though, which may be an issue...

I think the OD over gray would be pretty cool, too.  It reminds me of the old USAAF manual my best friend's dad had, from his time in the service, and the one end paper had a pic of "coming attractions", one of them being the B-29.  It must have been one of the Y's.  Seeing it in the camoflage was a surprise for me at that time, since I had only ever seen the natural metal finish.

I'm not sure the Russian bird is sufficiently different for it to stand out in comparison with other American NMF birds.  But the OD livery you sure don't see every day.

Second choice would be the test bed with all the manned turrets, in a diorama with a full crew.  You could field two baseball teams with that many men!

Regards,

Brad

See, THIS is part of the problem I face- there's too many cool projects to build!!

I'll get to all of 'em.... eventually. 

Hey!  I'm young!  (The testbed with manned turrets is going to be my FOURTH B-29, BTW.)

Here are some more odd balls off the B-29 line to whet your appetite, with all pics scanned from the same book. A line up of projects derived from the B-29 will devour real estate fast in 1/48 scale, but would be an interesting sight.

Potential projects to add to the list:

Lucien Harpress wrote:

Well, I'm known for doing something completely different than anyone else, right?  It seems everyone wants an OD paint scheme, so...................

 Drats...next time guys, we use reverse psychology on him...

 Sure nuff, looking forward to seeing anything you do.

Well, I'm known for doing something completely different than anyone else, right?  It seems everyone wants an OD paint scheme, so...................

After a bit of thinking, I think I'm going to end up doing the NMF over Black offered in the kit.  The box option is quite colorful (silver, black, and blue, along with nose are and kill markings, and it's been too long since my last nice NMF finish.

Mark my words, though, the next B-29 I build (and there WILL be more!) will be the OD.  Then, after that, a Monstro/XF-85 combo.  And no, that's not something I WANT to do... it's something I'm GOING to do.

Heck, if I manage to royally screw up the finish on this one, I may paint it OD anyway!

Thanks for everyone's input, though, and I'm sorry if I disappointed anyone.

I've always liked the B-29.  In fact, I blame it as one of the aircraft for getting me addicted to WWII aviation in general.  As a young kid I remember seeing the Nova special on the team trying to fly the "Kee Bird" out of Greenland.  Thus, the NMF/Black scheme is something I'm real attached to.  In addition I fell in love with the cover art of a B-29 reference book, also sporting the same Korean War scheme.

This is the crux of my problem.  My love of odd stuff (OD, Tu-4) is conflicting with these early views of the B-29 as an "All-American" bird.  

I think.... I don't know.  I'm going to build more than one of these, this I know- an OD one, a "Monstro" one with parasite XF-85, and a Korean bird.  Which one first, though......

The Tu is more tuned to your twisted ways Lucien, but I vote for the OD also!

(Hey!, what's with your wanting to build something that others have built?)

I gotta vote for OD.  It just isn't that common, it would be fitting....

WarHammer25 wrote:

OD or Tu-4. You don't see too mant of those builts compared to NMF B-29s.

Although I do favor the OD a little more

DUHHHH!!!!

The TU-4 Bull

Dug through my references and came up with a couple pictures. According to Boeing B-29 Superfortress (Bowers, 1999), the first 40 B-29-1-BW's built at Wichita were finished in olive drab and gray. Finding pictures are apparently challenging though, through the five or so books on the B-29 on my shelf there were less than a dozen.  

I scanned the few I could find and labeled the pictures with the references I took them from, along with a portion of the caption.

The caption provided no information on the aircraft, and the quality of the image makes it difficult to discern if the B-29 in this pic is green / gray or overall black.

If you are up for minor tweaking of the airframe, and given your affinity for Soviet aircraft, how about completing a Tu-4?

Seems the major exterior differences are small, the most obvious being the lack of de-icer boots..