Warbird Information Exchange

They're MPC Airfix PBY-5As backdated to PBY-4 (left) and PBY-2 (right). The A-12 was a vacuform (from Rareplanes I think) and the B-18A (didn't learn until later the were no "A"s at Hickam) was scratchbuilt, with a carved wood fuselage, and wings and tailfeathers from an MPC Airfix DC-3. It was pretty crude! And after all these years, there's STILL no injected B-18 kit out there...
The Ducks were Airfix, backdated to J2F-4s by shortening and reshaping the cowlings, adding exhaust collector rings and cutting away portions of the forward fuselage and installing them backwards to taper down towards the engines. Props were from the Williams Bros. Boeing 247.

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All right, Mister Dorfmann, start pullin'!
Pilot: "Flap switch works hard in down position."
Mechanic: "Flap switch checked OK. Pilot needs more P.T." - Flight report, TB-17G 42-102875 (Hobbs AAF)

Quite a project..too bad the movie never got made. I was in high school back during the days of the initial Star Wars craze, and my buddies and I were inspired to make our own epic space opera. We built a number of spaceship models and came up with some conceptual drawings and storyboards, but never got as far as an actual script. Of course, this was in the days before camcorders, and all we had to work with was a Super-8 movie camera..which put the production costs well outside our meager paper-route budgets.

I think MPM (or one of their Czech subsidiaries) has a B-18 on their "future release" list. That's one I'd like to have myself..I have a soft spot for ugly airplanes (probably why I have such an affinity for B-24s!)


Cheers!

Steve

My parents are in the process of moving from the home that I grew up in (they've lived there 31 years). I went over to get the toys and models that they kept in the basement. While going through the boxes, I was astounded to find the very first plane model I made, a 1/72 scale Spitfire Mark XXII. My uncle bought it for me when we first moved to Maryland...31 years ago. It was molded in translucent white plastic, as if it was supposed to glow in the dark, but it doesn't. I was almost certain that it had succumbed to anti-aircraft fire, yet almost incredibly, it survived where so many other of my models did not. Of the over 120+ models I made between ages 7 - 14, only a handful still survive. I have no idea what I'm going to do with them now.

Wow...my mom threw out most of my old models after I moved out. I have a few battered hulks with missing parts left from my teenage years, but the really early ones are long gone.

SN

saxman.... bring em down ohio way!! i can regress into childhood, as a matter of fact i can use the blood pressure relief too!!!! i have 2 new toys..... a .22 magnum revolver, & yes, a flare gun. the flare gun, was neccessary , because i'm in the marine business, & when flares get expired, or even a year or 2 dated under their belt i can't sell them at a profit, so i bring em home & blast them. line up those models

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

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I would gather my collection of 135 1/48 scale airplanes and re-create CAF airshows. I found that "whippersnappers" and a handful of bbq pit ash made great Blastard explosions.

near 40 years later i go visit my mom & dad & i re-visit the battlefield of my youth......... all laying in the woods behind my parent's place, in a zillion pieces... no survivors.... but they all bought the farm for the tom effort!!!

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

decades from now maybe somebody from the history channel will do a documentary of the war....... of my delinquency

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

My first airplane model was a wood Strombecker P-61 Black Widow I spent the better part of a week building it using my grandfathers abundant supply of sandpaper, glue and gloss black enamel I finally managed to get the decals on it.
that night I had it warming up on the runway (read couch) while it went in to get a glass of milk my Mother decided to sit down to read the paper she did not see or hear the engines running and sat down on it.
We went downtown the next day and bought another P-61.
I built a lot of wood kits before stepping up to plastic.
CHUCK

When I moved away from home, there were a dozen aircraft in various formations and attack poses hanging from the ceiling by fish line and another two dozen on the shelves in my downstairs room. My younger sister would be taking over "the room" the second I moved out, so the planes had to go. Most experienced battle damage via my pellet gun. A few years before that I recall placing a 22 cartridge in a tank turret and topping it up with gasoline in the back yard when my parents were out. Fortunately I nor the house suffered any damage and I have an indelible memory of a tiger tank blowing up real good.

ahhhhhh a good old thread has resurfaced!!!!

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

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My dad was always into muzzleloading rifles, and has his own civil war cannon, so my brother and I always had access to gun powder. He taught us how not to blow ourselves up, with the rationale that we were going to do it anyway. He let us blow all kinds of stuff up, we just had to prove to him we had a clue what we were doing first. The nearby corner convenience store sold printed foam gliders. I thought they were pretty neat. You could hollow out the space under the wing root, stuff a fire cracker in there, give it a shove and watch it get "hit" by imaginary AAA. I specifically recall a MIG-21 that was all red that exploded very nicely over the backyard. Score one against the commies, I said!

As a teen after my brother went off to be a ICBM launch officer (he never got tired of the idea of making explosions, I guess), a good friend of mine gave me one of those large-scale balsa and fabric-covered RC airplanes. This one was a P-38, never had engines in it and it had I recall about a 3 foot wingspan at least. I really should have filmed this, but I added weight to the engine areas and the nose to balance it and climbed up a tree a few times to get it gliding just right. Then, I filled the wing roots with black powder, soaked the wing roots in gasoline, placed large fireworks under the wings and replaced the "rocket pods" with bottle rockets, built a giant slingshot and launched it over a giant sand pit in flames. A bunch of my friends showed up, and we cheered as it sailed out over the fit, flaming and popping away, then WHAM, a giant explosion as the centerline charge went off. The only thing left as the wingtips and the tails. Nothing else. It was a heck of a sight. Years later, I was reminded of that scene in "Flight of the Intruder" where the A-6 sails along in flames and then explodes. I deeply regret I didn't find a video camera to film this with but we didn't get one until a couple of years later.
I found the definitive pop-culture reference to this kind of thing. Look here:

http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/ch/1986/ch860421.gif

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Life member, 91st BG Memorial Association
Owner, 1944 Willys MB #366014
Former REMF (US Army, O3)