B-47E Stratojet - Air Research and Development Command

Published on
February 18, 2015
Review Author(s)
Scale
1/72
MSRP
$59.95
Product / Stock #
02120
Company: Hasegawa - Website: Visit Site
Provided by: Hobbico
Box Art

Boeing's B-47, the first American jet bomber, was ordered in April 1946, and first flew in 1953. Although thought to be a good-looking plane, it had a few shortcomings that shortened its service life, including limited weight movement due to its landing gear configuration and uncomfortable crew conditions.

Hasegawa's B-47E kit comes in a big box with a nice painting on the top, and it includes decals for two aircraft of the Air Research and Development Command. The plastic is light gray, and as this release is a reissue of a vintage kit, it sports raised rivets and panel lines. There are many sink marks, including ones on the seat backs, wing roots, wheel wells, bomb bay doors, and fin. The kit features a one-piece canopy plus a positionable boarding ladder, crew door (with nothing behind it), and bomb bay doors. A bomb load is also included.

There's a lot of side play to the cockpit floor, so make sure you center it. The seats also have plenty of slop in their fit. The cockpit color is specified as green, but most references say it should be gray. As placed, the yokes will lie against the instrument panels, thus they should be moved back an eighth of inch. The cockpit is sparse so I drew in "black boxes" with a Sharpie, although when finished, it's hard to see much. There are no locating pins except on the fuselage and wing, and lots of flash was present. The inboard engine pod is hollow, and I drilled out the outer engines' nose cones to match the inboard ones. There is no exterior detail on the outboard engine pods.

Painting was made somewhat complicated with half the bottom of the aircraft silver and half of it white, so I left off the fuel tanks and engine pods until after painting. Filing and filling was needed to make the engine pylons fit the wings.

The decals looked nice but didn't settle down for beans. I used Micro Sol with no apparent effect and then tried Mr Mark Softer. It settled them somewhat but bubbled my paint job along the walkways on the wing. Gee, I love this hobby.

When finished, the model looks okay but will be no contest candidate without a lot of skilled work; however, it’s the only one in 1/72 scale and first came out in the 60s.

Thanks to Hobbico and IPMS/USA for the opportunity to review this subject.

Comments

Add new comment

All comments are moderated to prevent spam


This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.