1:72 Boeing B-29 Superfortress

Chengdu and Saipan, two entirely different wars

Between the two machines on the sheet lie nine months and utterly different conditions. The aircraft 42-6299 of the 770th Squadron of the 462nd Group operated in July 1944 from a forward airfield near Chengdu in China. The bombers carried both fuel and bombs to this base themselves over the mountains and several supply flights went into one combat sortie, so the resulting number of bombs dropped was tiny against the effort expended.

The second aircraft, 42-63510 of the 874th Squadron of the 498th Group, was caught by April 1945 at Isley Field on Saipan. That was employment set up quite differently: the bases in the Marianas lay within reach of the Japanese islands, formations took off in dozens of machines and the raids were flown at low altitude and at night.

Names on the nose and what to do with them

Both aircraft have a name of their own painted on the nose. Such inscriptions arose from the decisions of crews, changed during service and tend to be the most reliable clue to the period a particular form of a machine belongs to.

In the package lies the print alone, and plastic and photo-etched components are not to be looked for there. The sizeable surfaces of the model are mostly in bare metal, where the edge of the carrier film is clearly visible. So polish the surface first, settle the markings with a decal softener and finally unify the area with a faint overcoat. The inscriptions on the nose are applied only after the large insignia on the fin have dried. The Chinese machine will take noticeably rougher soiling than the later Saipan one, because dusty forward airfields left traces on the underside of the fuselage that a sea base never created.