1:72 B-24J Liberator bomb bay

Roller doors and a narrow catwalk

The Liberator handled its bomb bay differently from the other four-engine bombers. Instead of two leaves swinging down, it had roller doors: segmented plates ran up along the sides of the fuselage on guide rails, much like the tambour of a writing desk. The aircraft could thus open the bomb bay even in flight in formation without the doors increasing drag. Inside, a narrow catwalk ran above the open space, used to cross between the front and the rear of the aircraft; in a sheepskin coat and with a parachute it was not a pleasant trip.

The B-24J subversion was the most numerous of all, several plants built it at the same time and its recognition mark was a nose turret with a pair of machine guns. The bomb bay takes up a substantial part of the fuselage and is therefore conspicuous even in a small scale.

The set of etched sheet adds to it what an injection mold cannot manage: beams, racks with shackles, wall stiffeners, the door guide rails and the catwalk itself complete with grab handles. The pieces are adapted to the smaller scale, so some assemblies come about by layering several thicknesses of metal on top of one another. The bending is done in a bending tool, super glue holds the joints and the finished assembly is painted only at the end, so that the edges do not get flooded. Count on work for several evenings.

The bombs hung in two compartments one above the other, so the inside was not an empty box but a two-story structure. Anyone who uncovers it on a model gains a view into the innards of a kind not found on the other four-engine types of the period. A sensible order of work starts with the beams, continues with the stiffeners and leaves the catwalk to the end, so that it is not in the way during assembly.