Thorpe Abbotts B-17 Flying Fortress

Neuling
Impressive work!

Живко Джаков
The model is great. The "Bloody 100" certainly caught the attention of many people. I'm watching the series for the second time now. As a matter of fact "Shilaylee" has the tail number 231987. Number 231987 is of an aircraft named: "Powerhouse".
100thbg.com/aircraft/?aircraft_id=10350
100thbg.com/aircraft/?aircraft_id=10184

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Jonathan Read-Bone
Many thanks @Neuling .. I loved building the Airfix B-17G kit, but an incomplete moulding of the undercarriage meant I decided on a wheels up config leading to the challenge of finding a suitable stand. Meanwhile, what I was really after was the B-17F as the decals I had first purchased was for that model. Having recently built Acadamy's excellent P-47 I thought I couldn't go wrong with their B-17, but how wrong, the fit was not good and the asymmetric wing line all wrong. I wish I had just used the original decals incorrectly on my Airfix kit as the subsequent decals I got for this were not the best ... that said, the B-17F looks good hanging from my workshop ceiling where I can not see its bad wing line and I really like the wheels up B-17G flying in at me from my model display cabinet 😊

Jonathan Read-Bone
@Живко Джаков Thanks! I was lucky to get a guided tour of Thorpe Abbotts on a visit to many of the airfield museums across Norfolk and Suffolk early in 2023. This was before I even learned of the Hanks / Spielberg production. I admit to finally kicking off my B-17 builds in unison with the release of the TV Series but a good few months prior to this I read Donald L Miller's book "Masters of the Air" which was absolutely brilliant. I was therefore, really looking forward to the series. I too had to watch it twice, not however, because it was good, but because I couldn't believe it could be so bad! They really missed a trick here, it was poorly paced, badly edited with a very jumbled storyline and lots of nonsense. I felt nearly as disappointed as when I watched "Pacific" after "Band of Brothers". I feel they should have used bits of the excellent follow-up documentary - as they did with Band of Brothers. Do read the book if you haven't already, it fills in so many of blank spaces left by film.

As for aircraft numbers, they can always be confusing and misreported ... I found this set also only came with one "X". To be honest, it looks close enough for me and no one would probably even have noticed if I'd used the B-17F decals which would have saved me £££ on an Academy kit I don't like and decals which are apparently not that accurate 😉

Neuling
Very well done, Jonathan.