Hong Kong Models Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress 1:32

The HK Models B-17G

Initial impressions and basic breakdown of parts

Open the box and you’ll probably like what you see – that was my first impression and what I immediately notice is the fine surface detail – this could have been a deal-breaker but what you have is very realistic and fine surface rivet and panel line detail. Great! Just looking around the airframe and comparing with reference photos accuracy looks perfectly acceptable to me although I haven’t gone right across the whole airframe – life’s too short, sorry. I did spot an area on the side of the fuselage immediately aft of the main wing training edge where the fuselage panel/rivet detail didn’t seem to join up evenly but looking at pics of the real thing this seems to be accurate.

Given the overall size it’s not surprising that the upper fuselage, nose and Cheyenne tail turret assemblies are moulded separately, no doubt because an ‘F’ model is coming along in due course. Hopefully all these sub-assemblies will line up and fit well.

Notice I’ve dropped my 1:48 Tamiya P-51 test-bed model into this shot of the starboard wing, again, to give you a sense of proportion with the B-17G.

Here are some more shots of the main components…

Moving on to the internals – cockpit and bomb bay

The cockpit really impresses as far as it goes; detail looks superb with just about everything you’d expect to see supplied – lovely little touches are the throttle levers and control column. The instrument panel is moulded in plastic with a decal for the instrument faces to apply behind. I’ve got to say that that whilst this is ‘OK’ what would have felt far better would be if the manufacturer had collaborated with Eduard, say, to include some great colour pre-painted photo etch – especially given the price of the kit.

The bomb bay is excellent, with and this, like the cockpit is a very busy area of the model that includes options for open bomb bay doors.
Looking at the bomb bay doors and then across the rest of the model you can’t help but notice that there are mould ejector pin marks everywhere; many won’t be visible but may more like on the insides of the cockpit and bomb bay doors will be seen in this scale. This means you’ll have a lot of careful cleaning up to do to render them invisible on your finished model. I usually end up cutting small pieces of metal foil and dropping these into the internal framing ‘squares’ that are affected and I guess you can also use thin plasticard – whatever you choose be prepared for some work here.

Just staying in the bomb-bay 10 bombs fit onto the racks supplied and this area of the kit is well done overall.

Read on…