ICM B-26B Marauder 1:48

Wings next. To each lower wing half are cemented the four walls which make up the main undercarriage bay. Inside these are attached two struts which make up part of the intricate landing gear. These do protrude proud of the under surface which makes them vulnerable.

I attached a piece of masking tape over them for protection. An inner piece needs to be glued inside the aileron cut-out before the upper wing can be attached. Again the fit is excellent requiring minimum clean-up of seams.

The two flap sections on each wing can be added at this stage but are only engineered for the retracted position. I couldn’t find any period photographs of the aircraft parked with the flaps down so this makes sense. If you want your flaps deployed, you will need to check references. The Marauder utilised slotted flaps for extra lift and so scratch built mounts and actuators will be required.

I elected to fit the flaps and ailerons after the wings were mounted to the fuselage. This also applied to the landing light and navigation light covers.

The two P&W Double Wasp engines are each made up of twenty seven parts and build into convincing replicas. The two rows of cylinders were painted Tamiya Nato Black before a dry brushing with Aluminium to pop out the detail. For the pushrod tubes I used semi-gloss black with the ends picked out with chrome silver. The reduction gear housing, sum and magnetos were painted light blue. The induction manifold and exhaust collectors on the rear of the engines will be completely hidden when cowled and so I didn’t paint these.

Super detailers would also probably add some wire to form the ignition harness. For me, a wash with AK oily dirt sufficed.

Each cowling consists of three well-fitting pieces. The inner walls of the upper carb intakes and the lower oil cooler intake are also added. When built, each cowling assembly accepts its engine with a positive mounting. The two sides of each nacelle can be joined after the main gear door hinges are attached along with the firewall and two bulkheads.

There is a single exhaust pipe with shroud on each side of the nacelle along with what looks like a vent pipe.

Next, the engine is cemented to the front of the nacelle. The complete assembly is now positioned on the underside of each wing. Fit throughout is excellent.

Wing attachment is simple. Each wing slides smoothly on to the two spars and butts up to the fuselage snugly so that no filling is required. When the cement had cured the ailerons and flaps could now be attached.

With the wings attached it was now possible to add divers ‘lead’ shot to the open radio compartment behind the cockpit until the model was slightly nose heavy when balanced on the main undercarriage mounting points. Don’t forget to temporarily add the dorsal turret when you do this! The instructions call for 50grams of weight to be added but I found that it needed a little less than this if the weight can be fixed into the forward part of the compartment. I used cyano gel to achieve this. It is important to use as little weight as possible to achieve nose-sitting as will be apparent when we add the undercarriage.

Painting and Decals…