This is my big build of 2014. I have always been a big fan of the last flying Fortress in europe and i have visited her many times at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford England. (All history ane information has been taken from the Sally B preservation Society website)
Businessman and pilot, Ted White brought F-BGSR to Britain via Biggin Hill to the Imperial War Museum Duxford, as N17TE, in March 1975, to begin a new life as Sally B, named after Ted’s long-time companion Elly Sallingboe. Sally B made her debut at the 1975 Biggin Hill Air Fair, flying as the USAAF World War Two Memorial Flight.
Kept in flying condition by volunteers from the newly formed Duxford Aviation Society, the Fortress was painted in the 457th Bomb Group, USAAF 8th Air Force, based at Glatton during the Second World War, but retaining her original serial number 485784.
Sally B continued to be flown at displays as a memorial to the 79,000 US airmen who died fighting in the skies over Europe between 1942 and 1945. In October 1979, a distinguished audience assembled at Duxford to see Colonel John Vanden Heuvel DSC unveil a plaque fitted in Sally B’s radio room, dedicated to the fallen airmen, thus putting an official seal of approval upon the aircraft’s role as a flying memorial. No silent, cold memorial this, but a living tribute to the dead, borne aloft with the thunder or engines into the sky that they knew and loved and in which they fought and died.
To do this living memorial the the 8th Airforce during WWII I have planned and saved and bought as much detail as I can for the Monogram and Revell 1:48 kits. Using the Revell fuselage for the main build I will have to cut and shut to get Sally B's unique configuration of windows, and guns. The details interior resin set from True detail will be a challenge, along with Eduards Big Ed set. I like a challenge and know that hi sbuild will test my modelling skills to the fore!
Sally B will be set in a diorama on an airbase in the UK sometime in 1944, with the newly released Tamiya refuelling set, Academy armanent set, Flightpath trolleys and airfield accessories, along with Verlinden resin crew and ground crew it should set the scene nicely.
I realise Sally B never flew in the war, but as a fitting tribute to her main role as being a flying memorial I though this a fitting setting to put her in.
Sally B has had many schemes over her life and I also wanted to represent this in the model. I have decided to do this by painting the main forward fuselage in olive drab, teh centre section in bare metal and the rear section olive drab with yellow tail. I realise this is a bit unconventional and I have asked the Sally B preservation society for thier blessing before I start.
I started with some major rework on the main fuselage.
Once I had done this I could then work on the resin interiors.
The forward nose window configuration on Sally B is unique and the resin interior needed some serious rework to get right.
The Big Ed photo etch is superb and Eduard have excelled themselves, to make thing interesting I am alternating between interior and exterior detail.
In 1981, Sally B was introduced to a wider audience through her first TV role as B-17 Ginger Rogers in London Weekend Television’s (LWT) We’ll Meet Again.
By 1982, plans were well underway for the first Great Warbirds Air Display (GWAD) at West Malling when tragedy struck. Ted was killed when his T-6 Harvard, G-ELLY, crashed during an air rally in Malta. Devastated by the disaster, Elly and the team pulled themselves together to hold the air display, and to continue flying Sally B as Ted would have wished. In his memory, Sally B’s starboard inner engine cowling will always carry the same black and yellow chequered markings as his Harvard.
In 1989, a major break-through came with a starring role in the film Memphis Belle. A re-make of William Wyler’s Memphis Belle, the story of the first B-17 to complete twenty-five missions over enemy territory, the film graphically brought to a younger generation the role played by the Flying Fortresses during the Second World War, and the bravery and skill of their crews.
Five airworthy B-17s were collected for the film, two from France, two from the USA and Sally B. Peter Brown, Chief Engineer for Sally B, was asked by the co-producer, Eric Rattray, to be the Aeronautical Consultant for the film, and ensure that all the aircraft were in a serviceable state.
Filming began in June with Sally B as the only one of the B-17s involved fitted with smoke canisters and equipped to fire guns from the rear and ball turrets. As Elly says, “For the crew and team, who worked so hard, preparing Sally B for this massive undertaking it was a very hectic, but immensely satisfying period”. Although Sally B played several different roles, she took the title role for the final, nail-biting sequence when the battle-torn bomber returns home from her final mission.
More progress today, scratchbuilding and photoetch in the radio compartment.
More progress, interior detailing and ball turret mount...
