1/48 Boeing B-29 Superfortress 45-21800 

& Bell X-1 46-062

by Stephen Chapis

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60th Anniversary of Supersonic Flight - Oct 14 2007

 

There was a demon that lived in the air.  They said whoever challenged him would die.  Their controls would freeze up, their planes would buffet wildly, and they would disintegrate.  The demon lived at Mach One on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way.  He lived behind the barrier through which they said no man could ever pass.  They called it.........the sound barrier.

I was 12 years old when my grandparents took me to see "The Right Stuff" in the theater in 1983.  This monologue by Levon Helm gave me goose bumps back then, and it still does today.  I love speed.  My favorite X-planes are the air-launched rocket planes that were built to go fast- X-1 series, X-2, X-15, & D-558-2.

I was inspired to build these models while watching "The Right Stuff" for the umpteenth time.  I don't remember what exactly year it was, but I do know it was sometime between the release of the Eduard X-1 and the re-release of the Monogram B-29.

The B-29 Build

The actual building of this project was about 3 years worth of starts and stops.  The first thing I wanted to tackle was the cut-outs in the B-29s fuselage.  Nothing fancy here, I looked at my references, guesstimated where to make my cuts on the fuselage halves, took a deep breath, and went to work with my X-acto saw.  I first cut away the section between the fore and aft bomb bays.  Next I cut away an X-1 nose-shaped section that went from the forward edge of the bomb bay and extended almost to the rear of the nose wheel well.  Also in this area I had to cut off the lower part of the forward bulkhead.  As it turns out I made this cut-out too large.  Oh well.    
Finally, I removed parts of the fuselage that would make room for the X-1s tail section.  After smoothing out the edges with my Squadron sanding sticks I taped together the X-1 and checked the fit.  It looked pretty good, I did not have to remove anymore parts of the fuselage.

Before the build was over Monogram re-issued their magnificent B-29.  Thankfully the reissue contained new Hamilton-Standard props.  I no longer had to look for the OOP H-S props from Kendall.   I took the H-S props from the reissue and exchanged it with the original kits' Curtiss props.  No problem, the reissue will someday become Enola Gay.

The interior went together pretty much according to the instructions, except for the bombardier's area.  General Cardenas (we exchanged a few E-mails) had told me most of the equipment in this area had been removed.  So that is the way I built mine.  With the interior complete, the fuselage halves were glued together.  Another difficult area had now been reached.  How do I build the structure that attaches the X-1 to the B-29?  I had three pictures taken from inside the bomb bay that showed some of the details of how the
X-1 was mated to the B-29.  When I started this project I intended to build an as-close-to-scale structure as possible, but then I asked myself why go through all the time to build something that nobody is going to see?  I build for me, not for shows.  I took a piece of square stock and placed it across the bomb bay just forward of the wing carry through.  Using a piece of an F-16 main wheel well and another piece of square stock, I built another structure and placed it on the spine of the X-1.  Viola!  I had a nice non-scale attach point.  Another part that was modified was the pressurized tunnel over the bomb bay. This tunnel connects the flight deck with the rear gunners' area.  On the real aircraft the vertical fin of the X-1 would not clear this tunnel.  One of the pictures showed that this tunnel had simply been cut-off and a blank piece of metal placed over the hole!  I cut-off my tunnel even with the rear of the wing carry-through and covered the end with styrene.

Next I moved on to make more exterior modifications that were particular to 45-21800.  First I smoothed out the canvas boot for the tail guns.  I also removed and sanded all turret fairings according to the instructions.  At this time in the build the Silverplate Turretless conversion from Cutting Edge did not exist.  The turret covers provided by Monogram were far too big to use, so I cut my own covers from the thinnest sheet styrene I had in my stock.  I glued them into place and tried my best to fair them into the fuselage.  It looks okay, but this part of the model still bugs me.  The last change to the exterior was to skip the installation of the main gear doors.  On the real aircraft they were removed because they would not clear
the wings of the X-1.

For natural metal finishes I like to use Bare Metal Foil.  For the finish on 45-21800 I used the original Foil, with a couple pieces of Matte Aluminum thrown in for good measure.  The top center section of the wing was painted Testors aluminum.  For realism I applied the foil panel by panel.  It took a while, but I like the finished look.  The foil was only applied halfway down the side of the fuselage.  The rest of the fuselage along with the entire underside of the aircraft (except ailerons and elevators) was painted gloss black.  The only weathering I did was accomplished by alternating the "grain" of the foil on some of the panels.  For the nose glass, I applied foil to the entire nose and cut out each window panel separately.

The real aircraft was virtually devoid of stencils.  The national insignia came from the reissued kit.  The tail numbers and the nose art decals were done by Mike Grant.  I wanted to depict both aircraft as they might have appeared on 14 October 1947.  At that time the USAF was barely one month old, so I was unsure of which insignia the B-29 carried.  I eventually found pictures of the B-29 with the WWII-style insignia and the X-1 with the new style insignia. Problem solved.  Future was applied before and after the decals.

The X-1 Build

The Eduard X-1 kit is awesome!  This baby went together with no problems.  I bought the Profi-Pack Edition that included resin and PE parts.  I literally built it OOB.  Since it was going to be installed in the B-29 bomb bay, I built it with the gear up.  It took a little bit of fiddling to get the gear doors to fit correctly.  The entire model was sprayed with Testors "rattle can orange".  Future was put down before the decals. I used kit decals except for the "Glamorous Glennis" decal.  A hobby shop acquaintance had made a set that looked better than the kit decal.  I honestly cannot remember if I sealed the decals with Future or Testors Dullcoat. 

The only part of the X-1 that was weathered was the insignia on the left wing.  By 14 October 1947 46-062 had been carried aloft 30 times.  By this time the exhaust from the B-29s #2 engine had stained a portion of the insignia.  This can be clearly seen in the famous picture taken by Bob Hoover as Yeager sped past Hoover's RF-80 chase plane.  Lastly, Testors Flat White was brushed onto the bottom and sides of the fuselage to simulate LOX tank condensation.

At the end of the X-1 build I decided to add one tiny and thoroughly inaccurate detail.  I placed Yeager's broomstick on the seat of the X-1!  For those who may not be familiar with Yeager's broomstick story, I'll tell
you.  The night before Yeager's historic flight, he was thrown by a horse at Pancho's Happy Bottom Riding Club.  He was treated by an off-base doctor for several broken ribs.  His injuries would have prevented him from leaning over to lock the door on the X-1.  So he turned to his trusted friend Capt Jack Ridley.  Ridley cut-off a broomstick about 14" long, this handle could be used to, as Ridley (played by Levon Helm) said in the movie, "..stick this in the handle and wang it down!"  Broomsticks in the late 1940s brooms were either light blue or red and the length of Yeager's handle was approximately 12-14".  To make the broom handle I used the handle from a Hasegawa F-16 boarding ladder and cut it to a length that looked right.  I painted it red, and painted one end light tan to represent exposed bare wood.  I placed it on the X-1s seat.  Yeager and Ridley certainly would not have left the handle lying on the X-1s seat during the climb to launch altitude, but I could not resist displaying this way.

Click on images below to see larger images

  

  

  

Mating

Both models were complete.  It was now time to mate the two together.  If I was really insane I would have built a scale mating pit to display the pair.  This is not out of the question on a future project.

With both aircraft finished, I applied Zap to the square stock on the back of the X-1 and placed it into the bomb bay of the B-29.  While secured to the B-29 the real X-1 was stabilized by four sway braces.  There were four small black squares on the fuselage of the X-1; this is where the sway braces would touch the sides of the X-1.  I built my sway braces using round stock and square stock, painted them black and glued in place.  It was at this point that I realized I had forgotten to build the pilot elevator!  This elevator would carry the pilot from the top of the bomb bay down to the entry hatch of the X-1.  This elevator is quite visible in several in-flight pictures.  I built the elevator out of sheet stock, painted it black and glued it to the B-29 just above the X-1s door.

Conclusion

Finally after years of planning, researching, and building, my first mothership/X-plane project was finally finished.  This model is not a perfect museum piece, it has some flaws like wrinkled foil, obvious seams,
and some surgical spots that were not completely sanded smooth, but overall I'm pleased with the way this project turned out.  I also like the fact that I built something that, to my knowledge, no one else had built in 1/48th scale.

What's next?  About halfway through this project I decided I wanted to do more 1/48th scale mothership/X-plane combinations. My plan now is to have at least five more:

Boeing B-29 45-21800 & Bell X-1 46-062 (first to break Mach 1)- DONE!!!

Boeing P2B-1S 'NACA 137' & Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket 'NACA 144' (first to break Mach 2)- 10% complete as of June 2007

Boeing EB-50D 46-096 & Bell X-2 46-064 (first to break Mach 3)- 55% complete as of June 2007

Boeing EB-50A 46-006 & Bell X-1D 46-1386

Boeing NB-52A 52-003 "Balls 3" & North American X-15-1 56-6670 (first glide flight- 8 June 1959)

Boeing NB-52B 52-008 "Balls 8" & North American X-15A-2 56-6671 (first to break Mach 4, 5, 6, & set unofficial absolute world speed record)

Each of these above projects will be displayed with their associated chase planes.  Construction of Bob Hoover's RF-80 will begin once the EB-50D/X-2 project is finished.  The RF-80 will be built from an old Monogram F-80 and C&H Aero conversion kit.

I hope you enjoyed reading about this build.  I certainly enjoyed working on this project and writing this article.  Happy modeling.

Stephen

Click on images below to see larger images

  

  

Below is a teaser picture of my next project......it's the EB-50D/X-2 mothership/X-plane.

Photos and text © by Stephen Chapis