I remember when this kit was first released way back in about 1976.  Found it under the Christmas tree that year and probably spent about 2 hours putting her together.  Those were the days where a tube of Testors cement was all I needed; I had not yet started painting models. I want to say I built a second one some time during my childhood, but my memory is getting a bit fuzzy on some of those details.

So a few years ago, my dad asked what I would like for Christmas.  Since I have pretty much everything, I hemmed and hawed, and finally said something about a Liberator. Lo and behold the man got me not one, but two Liberators.  Well, I really don't need two of these beasts, so the second one remains wrapped in celophane and may end up on the selling block.

Here is the kit:

I spent a good bit of the summer months building two 1/32 Spitfires, and was really just looking for a quick build.  I've had my eye on a number of the old Monogram big bombers that I have in my stash, and those dual B-24s stood out.  So I pulled out the one that I had opened that Christmas with my dad.  When I do these big bombers, I always opt to build wheels up since I have no shelf space big enough to display these bad boys, so they are going "in flight mode" on the ceiling in my workshop.  As such, I made a determination that, in light of being a quick build, I was going to cut a lot of corners, not spend as much time detailing the interior (not ever going to be seen hanging from that ceiling, I reasoned).  I left out the majority of the interior parts other than the cockpit; no bomb bay, for instance, as I decided to display this Liberator with the bay doors closed.

Now what scheme to build?  The B-24 has a variety of great-looking schemes.  I had built a Ploesti bomber of the Pro-Modeler release from the late 1990s in a desert sand scheme, so I knew I didn't want to repeat that.  When I got to poking around, one scheme kept popping up that I found very intriguing.  It is also very unusual and one that I have rarely seen modeled.

The weather in England is often quite dreary, and visibility is rarely prime.  In addition, when the USAAF would send its fleet of bombers to visit targets in Western Europe, these bombers were coming from bases scattered across a wide area of Southern England.  They could not just take off and head straight for their targets; they would be sitting ducks to the guns of the Luftwaffe.  These bomber formations had to form up to travel as a group, where they were still pretty much sitting ducks but at least had some strength in numbers.  To form up they were looking for what came to be known as "assembly ships" - these were worn out bombers painted in garrish, bright, and almost obscene schemes.  Here is a great web site that speaks about these assembly ships:

http://www.vintagewings.ca/VintageNews/Stories/tabid/116/articleType/ArticleView/articleID/477/Polka-Dot-Warriors.aspx

I decided to build "First Sergeant", the first lead assembly ship of the 458th Bombardment Group, USAAC Serial No. 42-40127.  She was originally christened with the name "Thar She Blows Again" and had participated in the Ploesti raids in 1943.  During that raid she was hit by flak but managed to return to Algeria, where the raid originated, safely.  At some point she was assigned a new crew and stationed to the 458th in England under the new name "Bucket of Bolts".  When she was transitioned to the lead assembly ship role, she lost all of her armament and was painted with red, blue and yellow polka dots over white, neutral gray and olive drab.  Her job was to "take off before the other combat aircraft, and then lead them into a combat formation which would provide maximum coverage for each ship."  On 27-May-1944, while loading flare guns, a flare gun mis-fired which ultimately burned her to non-flight-worthy status; the crew was not aboard at the time and escaped injury.

So I was left with the daunting task of painting all these polka dots.  My focus was pretty much on that, and consequently I did make one very noticable mistake that I will point out shortly.  In any event, I experimented with a variety of methods of painting all these polka dots.  First effort was to use a hard-plastic circle template, but I quickly disacarded that when it became apparent that the template would be useless along all the curved surfaces of the fuselage, top and bottom.  Next up, I used my circle cutter on tape, and was actually going along pretty well when I noticed that my circles were not exactly right.  I'm still not sure what happened, but I think that I was simply losing my focus on that task and the cutter was slipping on me, which was resulting in oblong circles rather than proper 360 degree circles.  Finally, I remembered that we had sheets of circle stickers that, as it turned out, were a good size for use on my Liberator.

After putting down white Stynlyrez primer, I put down a coat of Model Master insignia red over all the surfaces where there would be a red polka dot, followed with a coat of Future (I was not sure how much sticking power these circle stickers would have).  Once the Future cured, I placed the circle stickers to mask red polka dots.  This was a laborious task that I probably could have done a better job at.  Next I put down another coat of white primer, then painted the forward section of the fuselage and the upper surfaces of the wings Model Master insignia blue, and the rear sections of the fuselage as well as the stabilizer and rudders Model Master insignia yellow, then after another coat of Future cured, I put down a second set of circle stickers for the blue and yellow polka dots.

Yet another coat of Future, then I paited the olive drab/neutral gray along the rear section of the fuselage, stabilizer and rudders, and Tamiya flat white on the forward fuselage section.  Finally I masked off the wings and stabilizer for the black de-icer boots.  Once everything dried sufficiently, I lifted all those circle stickers.  No paint lifted, although for the red polka dots, I did note that the stickers seemed more cured to the surface, probably because they had been hit with a coat of Future.  But I was able to get all the stickers off with no resulting problems needing re-painting, thankfully.

The mistake I made due to my focus on these polka dots had to do with the white circles for the big letter K.  I didn't pay attention as closely as I should have, and painted the white circle on one of the rudders on the lower half of the rudder rather than the upper half where the photos show it to have been.  When I noticed it, I was already done with the painting and thought, eh, well, it's not like they had Michelangelo out there painting these bombers.  So rather than re-painting, I just left it as is.

I opted to paint the remaining parts - props and canopy frames - and put a little oil staining under the engine nacelles.  That was all I wanted to do for this one.  I didn't use any putty on this build even though it needs it, nor did I work on the seams anywhere as I typically would.  One of the fuselage seams actually looks like it is a panel line, but one on the upper surface is one I typically would have made go away, but since it would never be visible from the floor, I'm not sweating it.

One final thing.  I say this as a big fan of Monogram kits, and one who grew up building them.  These kits have not aged well.  There were lots of bad fit problems with this B-24, and there was a tremendous amount of flash.  I'm really wanting to never build another Monogram (recent) re-release again.  I have many of their kits that were first sold back in the 1960s in the baby blue boxes, and having built a couple, one can easily see the difference in the molds between then and now.  I do still have a few newer re-releases in my stash, but it's very possible that I won't actually build those given all the frustrations I had with this kit.

Any way, on to my build photos.  She is wheels up, so I have her displayed for most of these pictures balanced on my airbrush stand, although I have cropped out most of that stand.  I hope y'all enjoy.

Finally, here are a couple shots of her leading out my fleet of heavy bombers, a B-36, a B-52, a B-36, a B-17, and the aforementioned Ploesti raider B-24 (which is not clearly visible, although you can just see its tail in the second picture poking out from behind the B-52).  Not exactly accurate as per history ...

I'm going to take some time away from the bench, but next up will be my final build for 2017, Hobbyboss' A7A Corsair II.  That will conclude my year of Allied/US warbirds, and next year I'm thinking of building only Axis warbirds.