1/48 Accurate Miniatures B-25D

Gallery Article by Mark L. Rossmann on Oct 26 2009

 

The B-25D was manufactured at the Kansas City North American plant with deliveries beginning in January of 1942.  “C” and “D” variants were the same, the dash model numbers and letter only designating the place of manufacture.   

Autopilot, R-2600-13 Holly Carb engines, de-icer system, 24 volt electrical system, larger wing tanks and removable bomb bay tank became standard features. The bomb bay was enlarged; fittings to carry underwing bombs, and short belly torpedo were included. A .50 caliber nose gun replaced the previous .30 caliber, also added was an astrodome for the navigator to take star/sun fixes.  

2690 “C” models and 2290 “D” models were built.  67 “C” and “D” models went to the British as “Mitchell II’s”, 162 to the Netherlands, 4 to Canada and 29 to Brazil. 10 “D” models were converted to the F-10 photo recon’s.

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After locating the Albatross “Dragons and tigers and girls…oh my!” 6 years ago, I have now built three and determining which “G” version to build next. 

This is aircraft #2 on the sheet and is a B-25D-1 (s/n 41-30026) of the 345th BG / 498th BS P.T.O., located at Port Moresby in October 1943. Note the all white tails designating this squadron. This aircraft does not carry the lower turret and is capped over. It also carries field modified four .50 cal’s in the bombardier nose compartment and twin 50’s on each fuselage side.   

Painting: Used the Testors Flat White Spray, Testors Olive Drab Spray, Testors Green Spray, Tamiya PS-19 Camel Yellow spray and Tamiya AS-7 USAAF Neutral Gray. Painted the aircraft nose yellow and green and cut out the nose art from original full nose decals, was easier to spray paint then fiddle with the large decals.

Information for this article came from decal sheet, Squadron Signal Publications #34 and Accurate Miniatures instruction sheet. 

Mark L. Rossmann

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Photos and text © by Mark L. Rossmann