B-24D: FINALLY FINISHED!

Acft 42-40617  code N                         named "Jose Carioca"  93rd BG (H) 409th BS

Here they all are, stateside when they became an official combat crew.  This photo should be, I think, Tuscan AZ..........

I noticed after I posted this that you can see the side windows for the tunnel gunner just aft of the waist windows, low on the fuselage.  Yes, 42-40617 had a tunnel gun and not a turret.  On their crew, they rotated gun assignments because the tunnel gun sucked so bad......On mission plans, the waist gunners and tunnel gunner were rotated and at Ploesti, My Great Uncle was the tunnel gunner and not on the list for camera duties.  I can't imagine what those last 2 minutes were like at 25-50 foot altitude

Thanks Rich and Dan for clearing that up! And thanks for the photos! Do you know where your great uncle's squadron flew out of? I'll see if I can't scan some of my grandpa's old photos of the war to show you.

Its correct.  On early B-24D the guns were staggered like that.  I'll see if I can find a photo of one...

V/R

Dan

Found one April 43 training class

This is my Great uncle Sgt. Glenn D. McCarty, posing at the right waist gun of his B-24D Jose Carioca.  Ploesti was NOT their first mission as was reported but their 7th mission.  The crew was lost, crashing into town ..... a sad story.  Anyway, check out the gun and window.

V/R

Dan

Yes, the A-6 turret guns were staggered with the right side gun being the longer of the two.  This was the same even when they grafted the A-6 turret to the nose of D models.  Those converted were known as drop snoots.

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Okay here's something that's a bit perplexing. I've cemented the two tail turret halves together, as you can see. I've glued one of the gun barrels to the front of the turret, and dry fitted the other. As you can see, the gun mounts that are molded into the clear plastic aren't lined up, which makes one barrel stick out longer than the other. So my question is this: is this a kit defect? Or were the tail guns on D model B-24's staggered like this? Hopefully someone out there knows the answer, I've checked some reference but haven't had any luck solving this riddle. I'd just like to know how best to approach this before I continue. Thanks! 

-Brian

Bomb rack?  I looked at those and said no way.  Bomb bay doors closed!!!

Very nice.

The seatbelts look awesome!

The 24 is coming along nicely.

Sofa, if its that bad, set it as hide and try something with a few less issues. You can always come back to it.

I didn't realise the Minicraft kits werte such a problem. Makes me kinda glad I went for Hasegawa.

I'm putting together that same kit as well.  My first foray into modelling since I was a teenager.  I had kits that fit better in the 70's unfortunately.  It is tedious and I'm close to setting it aside.

I decided to put up the rest of the photos I have of my Liberator on this post, rather than make a new post entirely. As some of you can probably tell, I'm hand painting this sucker. Between rent, student loan payments, and car payments, procuring a nice airbrush/compressor is kind of a dream at this point rather than a reality! Here's what I have so far:

The instructions say to glue the majority of the sub-assemblies into the side of the main fuselage before gluing the front/nose fuselage on. Well this creates a problem. So I ended up hanging most of the fuselage off of my table, then taped it on so it wouldn't fall off. By doing this, I ensured that I could lay both sides flat so they would line up correctly when I glued them together.

I'll post more photos when I get a chance to work on it again. Not sure when that will be, but I'll be sure to get some more shots up asap :)

Here's a photo of what I ended up doing with one of the hatch covers,  based on all the great info you folks passed along. Thanks again!

the waist windows were hinged at the top and were stowed in the open position on the inside of the a/c attaching to the backbone on the inside of the a/c, hope this helps

dave

richs, thanks for that link. That confirms what I thought, that the hatches were hinged. I built a 24 H a couple of years ago and had the hatches open, with one being opened by a crew man. So glad I got that bit right.

Here is what you want from the USAF Museum Virtual Cockpit Tour:

www.nmusafvirtualtour.com/.../B-24D%20Waist%20Gunner.html

One nice thing is that it has only been semi-restored as you can see by the faded zinc chromate.

Hey Brian, I'm sorry to say I've never built the kit and don't know very much about the B-24...however, I found this website which seems to have lots of information...if you scroll down to almost the end there's a section on the waist gunner (as well as every other position) and has some pictures of the interior in combat. These might help. It also says that many waist gunners placed small metal plates directly behind the guns to have some semblance of protection. Hope this helps.

EDIT: Seems like I forgot the link, sorry... http://freepages.family.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~webermd1/Liberator-Info.html