As a kid in the
fifties, I grew up living right under the final approach of the main runway for
Langley AFB in Virginia, when they were flying these planes in these markings. I
fell in love with them then, and still love them today!
Click on
images below to see larger images
In any event,
the kit was built pretty much out of the box, with a couple of exceptions:
I added the correct engine faces for the American versions, with parts I
cast from resin. All the Italeri (and most other) kits come with the
engine faces that are correct for the British Avon engines, but not
correct for the American J65's. I also added some BLU-27 napalm canisters from the Hasegawa Weapons Set #1 "Bombs And Other Fun
Items". Although I'm fairly certain that no one every flew this
load in combat, I wanted to depict a load of weapons that were
shown in a famous publicity shot of the period.
The decals in the
kit were kind of thin, and I had problems with the first set. Fortunately, I had
a second kit that I'm converting to a B-57A, so I covered the set from
that kit with a couple coats of Microscale Liquid Decal Film and used those.
Also, the tip tank and vertical stabilizer decal emblems were very translucent,
so I had to cut out the same shapes from white decal sheet to go under the
squadron and wing emblems. I used Model Master enamels throughout.
Ed
Ellickson aka "TheRealMrEd"
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