1:32 B-17F Decal Sheet

The twentieth of December 1943 over northern Germany

The bomber with serial number 42-3167 was returning from a raid with a shattered nose, one engine out of action, a damaged tail and a wounded crew. On the way to the coast a German fighter caught up with it, but instead of firing it escorted the bomber out over the sea and saluted. The two pilots met several decades later and their story became one of the most quoted in the history of the air war. It is this very machine that the sheet captures, including the code FO and the individual letter S.

The aircraft belonged to the 527th Bombardment Squadron within the 379th Bombardment Group. This was an early version of the Fortress without a chin turret, that is a type on which an attack from the front did the heaviest damage, as was confirmed quite literally in December 1943.

Early Fortresses still wore an olive drab finish with a light gray lower surface. That combination was given up for bare metal only about a year later, when the daylight formations received a fighter escort strong enough for camouflage to lose its practical purpose.

Markings on a damaged fuselage

Anyone who wants to capture the machine as it looked after its return has to apply the decals before starting on the damage. First the finished paintwork and the complete markings, and only then the scraped spots, panels dirtied with soot and the torn edges of the skin. The reverse order ends with the film refusing to adhere to a roughened surface and cracking.

The sheet is intended for finishing a completed build and holds no plastic parts.