Kit review: Academy B-29 "Bock's Car"
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This is a kit of the B-29 that dropped Fat Man on Nagasaki, and is
evidently one of a range of B-29/B-50 kits produced by Academy that
share parts - there were heaps of spare parts left over.
*Part Quality
Part quality was excellent, with beautifully engraved panel lines and
details. A little more could have been, perhaps, by having engraved
instrument panels rather than decals, but I can't really fault the
decals.
*Fit
Most parts fitted well. However, there were insufficient pegs and holes
for a number of parts - especially aerials and interior parts which had
no decent location guides. The big problem was the fuselage - it simply
could not fit together once the interior parts were in, leaving an
unsightly 1.5mm wide gap along the top (and this caused problems after
filling, like the clear bubble-dome not fitting properly). The engine
sections that mounted onto the wings did not mate correctly, requiring
extensive sanding.
*Historical accuracy
This was pretty poor. The kit did not state whether the kit was of
Bock's Car in 1945, or Bock's Car in a museum in the present day - and
there were a number of differences, starting with the nose art. Also,
the box art was completely wrong, having a red fuselage stripe where the
real aircraft didn't, no red tailfin marking, and no belly-dome. The
model of Fat Man is different from the replica alongside the museum
Bock's Car, and this is not mentioned.
*Instructions
The instructions were generally not bad, but were extremely vague in
some places about exactly how certain parts fitted together, or how they
aligned. The paint instructions did not tell you the colours to use in
accordance with any paint manufacturer's or federal standard, so the
exact colours needed required a bit of research. The decal instructions
were wrong too, mixing the fuselage and wing markings up. No note was
made in the instructions of weighting the nose so the plane could stand
correctly.
--
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To be "matter of fact" about the world is to blunder
into fantasy -- and dull fantasy at that, as the real
world is strange and wonderful. - L. Long
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