B25 Doolittle Raider

An Atlantis kit and this is what they call it as it is to depict his plane (by tail number) when they flew off the USS Hornet to bomb Japan. Not a bad kit because the parts fit well but there was a lot of flash to be cut off. No stand came with this kit and the instructions said to put weight in the nose. So I taped three pennies inside but that was not enough because when I glued the tail assembly on it raised the nose. So I could depict it as taking off but for now I put that block of wood under the tail.

 

Reminds me of the Revell kit.

 

It actually is a remake of the old Revell kit as Atlantis is producing many of the Revell kits with a better quality. But this one had more flash than some other Atlantis kits that I did. But at least there was no warping of the fuselage halves and they snapped together perfectly. The decals are not very good though, you can’t move them around to position them like other ones if you have to do that. And I never heard of one of these that was a snap together. I used Tamiya extra thin cement for this otherwise with the Testors glue I would have had glue all over the fuselage. If I had one of those lead fishing sinkers that would probably have given more weight to the nose. And as far as I saw the instructions called for one pilot’s helmet to be yellow and the other red, for some reason. But I may have gotten them mixed up as to which one should be red or yellow. But the nose gunner is yellow as the instructions called for.

 

They launched from further away than planned and to lighten the aircraft for the extended range, they replaced their guns with blackened broomsticks. Next time toothpicks! What a peaceful way/quaker guns to drop bombs. Great morale boosting for the American nation (and Chinese; but many of the latter were killed by retaliating Japanese).