I just wanted to post here a few pictures with comments on the qualities and problems of these two classic kits.
The difference in quality and accuracy between these two kits is actually quite monstrous: I attribute this to the fact that one kit has moulded on it MADE IN CHINA (the B-29 in 1977!) while the B-26 anounces the moulds were made in the USA...
The main basic problem with the B-29 is multi-layered warpage that insures it is almost impossible to build a straight and symmetrical kit. This is true for all vintages of this kit, and has nothing to do with aging plastic...
By contrast, the 1978 B-26B is the most accurate and trouble-free 1/48th scale WWII aircraft kit I have ever tackled, even compared to most of the Hasegawa and some of the Tamiya output of the last 20 years... (Most of the shapes and dimensions were made from original blueprints actually dug out from the original factory basement for the making of this kit, according to Richard Johnson who worked for Monogram on the research)
It is still, maybe along with Monogram's B-17G, the most accurate "biggish" 1/48th WWII aircraft kit out there: One only has to compare the accuracy of these two Monograms to the more recent MPM's He-177 or Accurate Miniature's B-25 to see how much of a mockery these two later kits are in overall shape...
The B-26 is not without its problems, however, and I would think the Monogram B-17G is actually the sounder of the two if built straight "out of the box".
Here is an unfortunately blurry photo of the B-26 tail profile errors and how I corrected them:
The cowls are another problem area, and were here advantageously replaced by "Lone Star" resin cowlings that offer the correct larger diameter cowl opening. (Only one mm more, but it does make a very visible difference) The kit cowls could be fixed but with great difficulty. Resin however does create difficulties almost equal to that by the lack of alignment time of the gel crazy glue I use, which holds not at all or seizes suddenly: It took the cowls being hammered off ten times each before the symmetry was OK...
Another problem is that the nose is too long by about 2 mms behind the nose cone and lacks curve on the top profile: This is very easy to fix and is easily tolerated by the plastic's thickness:
That about sums it up for major shape issues, and this is a much shorter list than for about 99% of the new releases that have come out since... The only really visible thing left is the displacement of one window frame in the left windshield...
As you can see, fit is generally poor, but not insurmountable. Scribing is surprisingly simple and easy. A major issue is the curving tendency of the main wing leading edges, made more difficult to fix by the ill-fitting leading edge landing light covers...
You can see here the corrected left windshield post masking position allowed by the Squadron canopy leaving cleverly this framing blank. You can also see the work on the initial gray priming to "straighten" the leading edges, and why the wing's lights interfere. Leading edges should taper in a straight and true fashion, a real bane of many kits...
Symmetry issues make fitting the Squadron glass tricky:
The "Easy Mask" vinyl masks here have a tendency to curl their edges over time, so spraying should be quick over compound curves, and this problem is much less noticeable on the Kabuki tape Eduard mask. However "Easy Mask" sometimes has more useable and accurate shapes in some areas, so I would say get as many mask manufacturer as you can... Cutting masks directly on thin Squadron parts is not recommended...
Despite all of its problems, this B-26 is a fundamentally much sounder kit in my opinion than Tamiya's P-51D, which has no really useable prop blades, a severely wrong nose cross-section, a near-incurable tendency to have a flat dihedral, and worst of all a canopy with wrong shapes and a very wrong windshield width-to-height ratio... Smash-moulding a new bubble and fitting it to a corrected windshield has equalled the work on the B-26 so far...
But not the work on the B-29... This kit by contrast can only be described as apocalyptic...
The very preliminary stages of re-shaping the tail:
Stretching the fuselage 6 mm to the correct 99 feet with a second kit's tail (cut between the top rear bubble and turret), which also allows glueing the tail to counter the ROTATIONAL warping of the fuselage... (One out of two fuselages (2 in 4 here) in addition offer a mismatch in fuselage depth: Just buy another until at least the halves heights match...)
The interior is the best thing in the kit...
The ridiculous turret base flanges visible above later changed my mind to do a turretless B-29. Note the expensive "Attic" resin set for correcting the turrets is totally useless except for one acceptably-made part: The big B-50 style streamlined turret, which I won't use...
The rear fuselage needs a huge amount of slimming down while it is stretched... Getting the approximate straightness seen here took two years, as the fin is warped to the right while the fuselage is rotationally warped to the left from this viewpoint...:
I always try for in-scale trailing edge sharpness in any model, and predictably the B-29 put up the toughest fight of all... Three kits over two years to get a full set. Cracking the upper leading edges on both wings, just ouside the outer nacelle, is the only way to relieve the intense warping: No amount of bending will achieve anything...:
Note that the thinner you go the straighter you have to be... This level of warping on a kit just shows how contemptuous of modelers non-serious model making can be: It would likely take mere seconds of waiting on de-moulding per kit to save me two years of straightening things...
I will use the defunct Cutting Edge cowlings, which correct the too-square kit cowlings by being too rounded, but fairly easy to fix. At least the cowl openings are correctly small enough now... So small the ridiculously oversized Monogram Hamilton prop hubs completely obstruct the opening... I will make copies of spinning Tamiya P-47D hubs...
The CE cowls are over 1/8" (!!!!) shallower than the kit's nacelles: This is also correct (!!)and requires shallowing up all 4 kit nacelles equally...
Finally, examination of the real aircraft yielded that the kit's "face" seriously lacked "jowls"...:
If you guessed mine will be a black-bottomed B-29 you were correct...
As a final note, never trust wing spars to offer symmetry on any kit, but especially so for Monogram's B-29...: The "shoulder" provided by the kit at the wing root is plenty enough for a strong butt-join with Testor's tube glue.
Neither of these kits will be finished soon, as you can guess, but I thought the accuracies issues would be of use to someone in the meantime...
Gaston
