The HobbyBoss 1/32 B24D Liberator.

[Jim R]

The metal undercarriage looks good. Stronger and more in scale than anything possible with styrene.

[adt70hk]

Looking very good Barry. Excellent work as always.

Andrew

[Andy the Sheep]

A Barry's 1/32 kit build needs to be followed for sure.
Excellent start.

[BarryW]

The bomb bay comes together really well. Parts nicely click into place though they have rather thick sprue gates to clean up, but then that’s just what you can expect with such large parts.

The above will need painting Neutral Grey before attaching bombs.

Also there is the structure for the ball turret that will fit behind the bomb bay which will need spraying Interior Green.

I will now be pulling together 12 bombs, each with five parts. This will be a little tedious but well worth it.

[BarryW]

The bombs are not as tedious to pull together as I thought largely because they fit really well so the seam clean up went painlessly.

The first stage next is to paint them with a sand yellow primer. This will provide a good base for the yellow ring which I will mask off with 4ml masking tape. That being done I will do a seam check soon before masking up the band. I used Google to check for pictures of these bombs so I can correctly position the band. Interestingly the photos showed the band in several positions including not on a curve or angle, naturally that is the position I will use to make this easier.
Pic below, all primed.


I have also painted the bomb bay for which Neutral Grey is called out plus some other internal surfaces interior green. These parts still need a bit of work, washes and dry brushing.
The wooden Ammo box was sprayed Ochre Wood and masked to paint the green. I then used an ‘earth’ oil brusher to give it a wood look.

[Mickc1440]

Nice progress Barry, that's a great looking kit

[Jim R]

Progressing well Barry. Glad the bombs didn't sap your enthusiasm.

[BarryW]

There being no issues with the seams I have sprayed the yellow. Tomorrow I will mask the bands and spray Olive Drab.

[Guest]

Interestingly the photos showed the band in several positions including not on a curve or angle

IIRC, the yellow band is to indicate these are HE bombs, so the exact position of the band isn’t overly important. Ah, here we go:

[ATTACH]490219[/ATTACH]

This is a page from US Army Technical Manual 9-1980 Bombs for Aircraft of November 1944, which can be found online as a PDF (though I don’t remember where I got it).

[BarryW]

That’s interesting Jakko

I decided to use this picture as the basis for my build.

[stillp]

Very sensible Barry!
Pete

[Neil Merryweather]

We had loads of them in the prop store when I worked on Masters of the Air- made of fibreglass of course.
That was a great job!

[adt70hk]

Coming on very nicely indeed Barry!!

[Guest]

I decided to use this picture as the basis for my build.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]n1208395[/ATTACH]

That’s a cluster bomb, probably (but I’m no expert) an M29:

[ATTACH]490236[/ATTACH][ATTACH]490237[/ATTACH]

You can see the hinge in your photo. I’m not sure of the colours of cluster bombs, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the single yellow line indicates that it’s a cluster bomb.

Judging by the shape, the bombs on your Liberator do seem to be those. I had kind of expected them to be AN-M64 general-purpose bombs instead:

[ATTACH]490238[/ATTACH]

[Tim Marlow]

The bomb at the front of the picture is a cluster, as you say Jakko. However, the one in the background on the trolley looks like a TNT filled HE, with something else (possibly a smaller incendiary) in front of it. The bomb load out would be mixed to generate maximum effect, depending upon the target. Blast would open up the buildings, incendiary would then set them alight, and cluster would eliminate personnel. Pretty brutal really.
Looks good though Barry.