People seem to have a hard on for correct lap joints for some subjects. I wonder if they are jumping on the "everybody else thinks so" band wagon.
In 1/32 scale a .050 thick sheet of metal is only one and a half thousandths thick. That's .0015. Or about 1/5 the thickness of the average piece of notebook paper. In 1/48th it's .001, about the thickness of gum wrapper foil after it's peeled off the paper backing.
One has to ask themselves, is this tiny little detail all that important in the scheme of things? I mean really folks. The rivets that hold the plane together stand higher than this and I'd bet the house that if a kit company covered a new mold in scale rivets that size everyone would have a shiit fit.
Methinks the house needs to keep things in perspective and listen to themselves sometimes.
And if anyone still wonders if it's really that important? The paint one would apply to get the model completed, counting primer, paint, and two clear coats, gloss and flat, not counting decals, will be thicker than scale lapped panels.
BTW, I picked .050 right out of the air. I don't know how thick the skin on a B-17 is. Were I to wager a guess I'd say it's thinner than that, making our theoretical lap joints even thinner.