Hasegawa

1/72 B-24J "The Dragon and His Tail"

Kit Number: 00947

Reviewed by  Mike Kellner, IPMS# 30864

MSRP: $92.99 Website: www.dragonmodelsusa.com The B-24 first flew in December, 1939. Powered by four Pratt and Whitney 1830-65 fourteen-cylinder engines, it went on to be America's most-produced aircraft with over 18,000 eventually being built. Because of the price of this newly-tooled kit, I was expecting a lot. It has some unique features which I liked, but also had some disappointments. I was impressed by the way the props were molded; typically, the attached sprue is connected to the hubs, ruining whatever detail is there and making for difficult clean up. This kit has the sprue attached to the propeller blades, which makes clean up much easier. The kit is molded in light gray plastic with fine recessed panel lines. The fit overall is OK, but I expected better. The lower nose glass was smaller on my copy than its surrounding area. The side cockpit windows didn't fit well for me, and the seven separate pieces of each nacelle needed some filling and a lot of sanding. On the other hand, the wing-to-fuselage fit was perfect.

The nose section is molded in clear plastic, which makes it nice to mask windows. Although the instructions said to paint the inside first with interior green, I cheated by first spraying the built model Gunze interior green and then spraying over that with Model Master non-buffing Metalizer silver. Shading was done by darkening some silver. The interior wasn't sparse, but it wasn't full either, so detailers can add more. There are seats, throttle quadrant, instrument panel, bomb racks and bombs. Bomb bay doors can be made open or closed---I chose to close them, but the fit was not that good, so I would open them if I built another kit. The ball turret is in three pieces so you don't have a seam line running down the middle of the sighting glass, but I had trouble understanding how to mount it. Separate wheels and tires make it easy to paint first, and then put them together, but I don't care for the flat (weighted) tires; they look like flat tires. If you look at a real aircraft, there really is hardly a flat spot, and very little bulge. The gun barrels are the best I've seen in this scale, and there is some wheel well detail in the wings. There is only one choice for decals---"The Dragon and His Tail"---they were on register, but they didn't settle well even after repeated coats of Microscale Micro-sol. This is the best B-24 in 1/72 scale so far, but I'm not sure it's worth the extra money over what you get with the Minicraft kit. My thanks to IPMS/USA, Hasegawa, and Dragon Models USA for the opportunity to review this kit.