1/72 B-17E "Old 666" 43rd Bomb Group 1943

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1/72 B-17E "Old 666" 43rd Bomb Group 1943

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

1/72 B-17E "Old 666" 43rd Bomb Group 1943

User Name: Dirkpitt289
Name: Dirk
Scale: 1/72nd
Kit: Academy
Category: Novice or beginner.

My contribution to the 4th WW2aircraft group build will be the B-17 "Old 666" of the 43rd Bomb Group which was assigned to the Pacific theater. To build this I will be using and modifying the Academy 1/72 B-17E "RAF Coastal Command" as the base. For the most part this will be an OOB build except for the addition of 5 more 50cal. machine guns bringing the total from 13 to 19. SWEET!

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I will post more about this particular aircraft shortly.

Thanks for looking
.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

My Youtube Channel
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Dirkpitt289
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Re: 1/72 B-17E "Old 666" 43rd Bomb Group 1943

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

History

One day in 1943 an old B-17E with the tail number 41-2666 formally known as "LUCY" was flown in and parked on an airstrip at Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea. The bomber had seen better days and its frame bore evidence of its heavy record of aerial combat. It was so badly shot up it was now worthless, and was parked at the end of the runway where other aircrews could cannibalize it for needed parts. That was until a young Captain from Orange New Jersey named Jay Zeamer intervene.

Stay tuned for more in our next installment now onto the model

The Model

I started by painting all of the appropriate parts and features with Model Master Interior Green.
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The green came out nice but a little too "pure" for an old bomber. So I made a little bit of wash with some black Oil paint and thinner
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I placed this clean piece next to the others so you can see the difference between the washed and non-washed parts.
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Here are the before and after shots of the fuselage. The photos make it look darker then it really is.
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This one is a bit better
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Here we see the office of Captain Jay Zeamer and 2nd Lieutenant John T. Britton
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Here we see the office of bombardier Joe Sarnoski and navigator 2nd Lieutenant Ruby Johnston
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Till the next time, thanks for looking
.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

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Re: 1/72 B-17E "Old 666" 43rd Bomb Group 1943

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

Between clients, and trying to get some work done on a minicraft B-29 I only have time for a quickie today, After reviewing last nights progress on line I noticed something I hadn't noticed before. I had weathered the fuselage and all the surrounding areas and yet the seats, table and wood floor were like new. It bothered me all day so when I got home I combined a little Burnt Umber oil paint and a some thinner and made a wash. Its not perfect by any means but it should look ok when seen through the nose and cockpit windows.

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After seeing these photos (The camera seems to capture more then my tired old eyes) I went back and cleaned up things a little more. It looks a lot better then these photos depict

later guys and thanks for looking.
.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

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Re: 1/72 B-17E "Old 666" 43rd Bomb Group 1943

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

More History on our subject:

The pilot of our subject was former Eagle scout Lieutenant Jay Zeamer of Orange new Jersey. Jay was a good pilot, skillful and daring, but for some reason he just never did manage to get past the check flight in the B-26 Marauder. His frustration gave way to complacency...there was little for the copilot to do. Zeamer's inability to get his own plane and his seemingly permanent relegation to the role of copilot had left him with no motivation. When enemy flak and Japanese fighters turned on the incoming bombers over Lei, Zeamer had awakened long enough to put on his Mae West and World War I helmet, and then went back to sleep. He was so unnerved by the explosions around him.

Zeamer's time in B-26's were limited and he was transfered to the 43rd BG

On to the model

Well its been a long time since I worked on "Old 666" today was the day I found my grove. I was able to sit at my bench today at around 10:00am as opposed to 10:00pm which has been the norm these days.

Here's what I accomplished:

Starting with some styrene and some photos I set to work.

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I started by using some green Putty to fill in the optional staggered waste gunners position and started to lay out some frame work using .030 square stock styrene.

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Next I used .080 H-Column to make the tracks for the waste gunners window.

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More frame work.

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Now before I could complete the frame work i had to install the gunners window but I had to paint it first. Using some fine grit sand paper i sanded the area around the window I wanted to paint olive green. This allowed the paint to stick to the clear plastic.

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Once the frame work was completed I added some interior green, and dry brushed on some aluminum to add some wear. The issue I ran into is I ran out of enamel interior green paint. I tried to use the acrilic paint I had but soon realized that acrylic paint does not mix well with regular thinners. :jaw-dropping: What I was stuck with was brushing on the acrylic and this is the result. The good thing is no one will ever see it and the window opens and closes. 8)

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.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

My Youtube Channel
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Re: 1/72 B-17E "Old 666" 43rd Bomb Group 1943

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

Next I turned to the nose of the aircraft.

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Lesson learned. No matter how tired you are don't rush it. I was to lazy to break out the air brush and now I'm regretting it

Well that's it for now. Thanks for taking the time to look at my work.
.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

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Re: 1/72 B-17E "Old 666" 43rd Bomb Group 1943

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

Some history of the B-17E
By the summer of 1940, the threat of war between the Axis powers and America was becoming too obvious to be ignored, and by the fall of that year the Air Corps had ordered 277 new Fortresses, to be designated "B-17E". Bigger orders were expected to follow.

The B-17E was a major redesign. The lack of a tail turret in the B-17D and its predecessors was a significant flaw, because the easiest way for a fast fighter to destroy a bomber was to get on its tail and hammer away at it. Attacks from other quarters meant a quick pass and tricky deflection shooting. Contemporary RAF bombers had a tail turret to discourage this tactic, but the Fortress was highly vulnerable to attack from the rear.

The B-17E was given a new rear fuselage from the radio operator's position back to the tail, where a new gun position was added. Fitting a full turret was impossible given the narrow real fuselage, so the gun position was in the form of a "stinger" with twin 12.7 millimeter guns with a limited traverse.

The new rear fuselage was about 1.8 meters (6 feet) longer. The tail gunner knelt behind glass windows and manually aimed the guns. The tailplane assembly was entirely new and bigger, featuring in particular a tall vertical tailplane. For this reason, the B-17E and its descendants were referred to as "big-assed" Fortresses, while the B-17D and its ancestors were called "shark-finned Fortresses".

The changes didn't stop there. As the rear fuselage had to be redesigned anyway, the teardrop-shaped windows for the pedestal-mounted waist guns were changed to rectangular windows. A remote-controlled Bendix power turret was installed in the belly, with twin 12.7 millimeter guns controlled by a gunner lying prone and peering through a periscopic sight.

The radioman retained the upward-firing 12.7 millimeter gun, but a new Sperry power turret with twin 12.7 millimeter guns was installed just behind the cockpit. The nose was made longer, and provisions were made for mounting one or two 7.62 millimeter machine guns in the front Plexiglas. The nose gun fit was not very effective, but for the moment nobody could figure out a better way to put defensive armament into the cramped nose.

Although the B-17E was heavier than the B-17D while being powered by the same engines, it was not much slower due to aerodynamic improvements in its design, with a maximum speed of 512 KPH (318 MPH).

The first B-17E rolled off the production line at the end of September 1941. Flight experience quickly showed that the remote-controlled belly turret was impractical. Trying to track an attacking fighter through a periscope was all but impossible, and much worse caused severe nausea and motion sickness.

The answer was to replace the remote-control turret with a Sperry "ball" turret with the 113th B-17E. The gunner crawled into the ball turret after takeoff and sat straddled by the two guns while aiming down between his legs. The ball turret could cover almost the entire lower hemisphere below the Fortress and could be directed accurately. However, it generally required a gunner of relatively small stature, and the gunner could not wear a parachute while he occupied it. Another disadvantage was that there was no room to store spent cartridges inside the turret, and the rain of cartridges from the ball turret could pose a hazard in formation flying.

The new B-17E was dramatically different from its predecessors. The THRILLING WONDER STORIES look of the early Fortresses was gone. The B-17E was a serious weapon and looked like one.
.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

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Re: 1/72 B-17E "Old 666" 43rd Bomb Group 1943

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

Ok guys I'm finally back with some progress to share. After looking at several B-17 books and numerous photos online I found another detail I wanted to add. What I found was that the model came with center bomb racks flanking the catwalk. What it doesn't have were the bomb racks attached to the fuselage. These I had to scratch build.

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Next I had to make some adjustments to the interior color of the aircraft. What I hadn't realized the first time around was that the bombay was not interior green. With a lot of poking around on the Internet and talking to people with infinitely more knowledge then me was that the fuselage was commonly left bare metal like the waist gunners area. The bulkheads and the inside of the bombay doors were green zinc chromite. Also you can see I finished the frame work in the waist and nose of the both fuselage halves.

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Here is the rest of the bombay area. After a lot of trial and error I found what I feel is a somewhat believable plywood. I first painted what is suppose to be wood with tan and let it dry. Later I came back with some brown and left it streaky allowing the tan to show through in places. Not perfect but not bad IMHO.

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here we have the right fuselage with the assemblies in place.

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Well that's it for now. After looking at the photos I noticed something I had forgotten to do and that is wash the Bombay bulkheads. Its late so I will address that tomorrow. Thanks for looking.
.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

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Re: 1/72 B-17E "Old 666" 43rd Bomb Group 1943

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

Back to the model

Here are the nose windows have been put in place along with other shots of the interior.

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Nose Glass, Top Turret and the Ball Turret

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.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

My Youtube Channel
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Dirkpitt289
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Re: 1/72 B-17E "Old 666" 43rd Bomb Group 1943

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

Wings put together

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For the next phase I had to crack open my Academy B-17F and harvest its stash of weapons.

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Painting the engines

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Hopefully the next time I'll have something of more substance to share.

Thanks for taking the time to look at my work.
.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

My Youtube Channel
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Re: 1/72 B-17E "Old 666" 43rd Bomb Group 1943

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

More History on "Old 666"

As I mentioned earlier on in the thread Jay was a bit of a miscreant earlier in his career. This led him to be denied an aircraft and crew of his own. Jay's problems in the cockpit aside, everyone loved the lanky guy with a big grin and a friendly manner. His friendship with Ken McCullar paid off not only in providing Zeamer opportunity to fly B-17 missions as both a navigator and copilot late in October, but with the chance to learn from one of the best. The innovative Captain McCullar went so far as to have his ground crews mount a 50-caliber machine gun in the nose of Black Jack, extra armament that could be fired from the cockpit. It was a practice not lost on Zeamer who, when at last he got his own airplane, planned to do same and become one of the first pilots to use a heavy bomber as a fighter aircraft.

Captain Jay Zeamer didn't have much to draw from in organizing an air crew. He couldn't even promise his men an airplane, but that didn't deter him. He scoured the squadrons of the 43rd Bomb Group for the men no one else wanted, the cast offs and screw-ups. In some ways it might have even seemed comical. Jay Zeamer was the pilot who still had never been checked out to fly in the left seat. Though likeable, he was still the guy no one wanted to fly with, and he was gathering around him a crew of men that like himself, were rejected by the other air crews. Walt Krell recalled, "He (Zeamer) went through the outfit and recruited a crew from a bunch of renegades and screwoffs. They were the worst of the 43rd--men nobody else wanted. But they gravitated toward one another and they made a hell of a crew."

To make matters even more comical, Jay's misfit crew didn't have an airplane. There again, Zeamer had his own ideas. One day an old B-17E with the tail number 41-2666 was flown in and parked on the airstrip. The bomber had seen better days and its frame bore evidence of its heavy record of aerial combat. It was so badly shot up it was now worthless, and was parked at the end of the runway where other aircrews could cannibalize it for needed parts. Captain Zeamer quickly intervened and claimed it as his own.

Zeamer's crew went to work on what would normally have been an impossible task--turning #41-2666 into a combat-ready bomber. They cleaned it up, patched the holes, fixed its engines, and modified it to their liking. Jay had a 50-caliber machine gun mounted in the nose so he could fire from the cockpit like a fighter pilot. In the nose, the 30-caliber flexible guns normally manned by the bombardier and navigator were replaced with swivel-mounted 50-caliber machine guns. The waist guns and radioman's guns were replaced with twin-50s, giving the airship unprecedented firepower.

Zeamer's crew put guns where they didn't even need guns, leaving loose machine guns on the catwalk so that if a gun jammed at a critical moment they could dump it and quickly replace it with a spare. Sergeant George Kendrick even mounted a gun behind the ball turret near the waist. "I don't know who would have handled that except the side gunner" Jay recalls. "He wanted all the guns he could get! He wouldn't let another gunner back there with him. He said, 'These are my guns. I'm going to shoot them all. I don't want to be bumping asses with another guy back here!' This was George Kendrick, the screwball of the crew."

In truth, in the eyes of the other pilots and ground crews at Port Moresby, the entire crew was screwballs. That impression aside however, it quickly became apparent that the men were building a flyable, fightable, bomber. At a time when aircraft and spare parts were in short supply, quickly other pilots and ground crews began eyeing #41-2666 enviously.

Walt Krell recalled what happened when it came to a head. "Jay was so mad...he ordered his men not to give up the airplane and they weren't about to see that happen. By now they would have done anything for Zeamer. They loaded their fifty calibers and they told everyone to stay the hell away, and Zeamer and his crew even slept in that damn airplane for fear someone would try to take it away from them...Everyone was talking about him and his renegades."

In the months of missions that followed Jay's crew was so busy that they never had the time to adorn their bomber with the traditional nose-art, commonly seen on aircraft of that era. Though many subsequent accounts refer to Jay's bomber as Lucy, that was a title Zeamer and crew denied and avoided reference to even in later interviews. The only markings the converted B-17E bore was the tail number. She became known simply as Old 666. Whenever there was a mission--any mission, no matter how dangerous--Jay Zeamer and his crew were the first to volunteer. They hung around the operations center just waiting for a mission. Soon they too, earned a nickname...

They were called the Eager Beavers
.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

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Re: 1/72 B-17E "Old 666" 43rd Bomb Group 1943

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

Last we left old 666 I was having problems with the windows staying in place and the fuselage closing up cleanly. With file in hand I shaved down the aft bulkhead between the bombay and radio operators room. Did some dry fitting and we were back on track. But before I can reattach the fuselage halves I had to reinstall the 3 missing windows. This time instead of using the window glue I used regular liquid cement which I applied with a thin paint brush.

next the haves went together and clothes pins and tamiya tape was used to hold it together. next using my sons Legos I fashioned a cradle to hold and support the fort without damaging the bottom turret.

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From the top you can see the fit is a lot better now. Before I reworked the bulkhead the gap was almost 1/16 of an inch.

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From the bottom looking into the bombay

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Did I ever tell you about this guy Murphy? Well he wrote some laws and wouldn't you know he came to visit me again. Just as i was placing the plane into the cradle I popped another window out. %&$*!!!! Fricken!! $&%*# FRICKEN Son of a... :evil: You get the point

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Till next time, Thanks for taking the time to look at my work.
.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

My Youtube Channel
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Re: 1/72 B-17E "Old 666" 43rd Bomb Group 1943

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

I started with filling and sanding the seams. :cry:

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After multiple sessions of filling, sanding and repeat (about a weeks worth) I feel I'm ready to move forward.

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Thanks for looking
.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

My Youtube Channel
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Re: 1/72 B-17E "Old 666" 43rd Bomb Group 1943

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

If you've been following the history along with the build you may recall the part of the story concerning George Kendrick. George was the ships only waist gunner. He had replaced the original single side mounted 30. cals with twin 50. cals in each window. He also had spare machine guns mounded to the fuselage and along the catwalks just in case any of them jammed. If a gun would jam he would toss it over board and replace it with one of the spares he brought along. According to Jay Zeamer George was the screwball of the crew. He even had a machine gun mounted behind the ball turret through the floor of the aircraft which brings me to the next part of the build.

To the best of my knowledge no photos exist of Old 666 so the only thing I have to go by in the way things were setup are the eyewitness accounts of the crew. Now except for the passage I posted back in posted earlier from jay Zeamer I can only speculate how George set this gun through the floor. That along with some creative embellishments on my part will all I have to go by. So here we go. In order to have a gun usable through the floor one has to speculate he had also had some kind of window to see through.

Here I marked the area out using a spare waist gunners window. I thought about using a bubble window like on the top of the nose of the F model but decided not to.

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Here is the window in place.I drilled and dry fitted the machine gun barrel but won't mount it till sometime after the beast has been painted

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Next I moved onto the wings. I have a lot of seem work to do in this area. I also need to remove the carburetor intakes

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Till next time, thanks for looking.
.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

My Youtube Channel
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Re: 1/72 B-17E "Old 666" 43rd Bomb Group 1943

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

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That wasn't to bad

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Dry fitting George Kendrick's floor mounted 50. cal

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.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

My Youtube Channel
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Re: 1/72 B-17E "Old 666" 43rd Bomb Group 1943

Post by Marek »

Dirkpitt, judging by the amount of almost reallife engineering you're putting into your Fortress, the FAA will have to deem it airworthy! Awesome build.
Marek
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