Consolidated PB4Y-1 Liberator

Bill Gilman
Anyone else remember this old kit from 1965? I'm traveling down memory lane...

Erik Houghton
Well pass me the popcorn and git to workin, you!

Joseph Massey
Coolness, antique Revell goodness on the bench! Looking forward to watching it come together.

Dave Flitton
I will be watching like a vulture...errr...hawk!

Bernd Korte
Always nice to see some of the older kits being tackled! Even better when they already come with recessed lines.

Hunter Cummins
I want more 😄😄😄 (man do I sound 5 but who cares!!😢)

Charles Jones
I remember saving the change from my lunch money in 7th grade to buy this kit. Took about 4 weeks and I had to keep "hiding" it daily in the store so no one else could get it. Just missed getting one last month online 🙁

Bill Gilman
HSC-5 - Having worked on this kit for the last few months, I don't think you missed much! Other than some memories, of course. Just curious, though, how much did the kit go for online? I only paid $1.00 for my copy!

Robbie
Sure glad you are doing this. I too have this kit in my stash. I even picked up the same decal sheet a few years back. Not sure I will go as far as you with the interior. But you did answer several questions/challenges on how to build this thing. Sanding the rivets off, how to mount the dorsal turret and plugging up that big spot were the ball turret would go to name a few. 83 grams of weight! Wow. Like you (we are close in years) I too have built this (and the green plastic one too) a few times in the past only to have them meet their demise from the business end of my red rider BB Gun (Ya - I actually did get one for xmas). Great job - Cheers (:-|

Keith Gervasi
Looking forward to this!

Mathias Carl
Great project.
And realy good pictures.
I am looking forward to see more of it 👍

Charles Jones
Bill, I got one a few weeks ago for about $50 including shipping and insurance. I had the chance at near mint kit of the B-24 Blue Streak for free as well as some other kits but the deal fell through for various reasons. Having said that, I now have the Privateer and vacation time next week so I am going to try to do an out of the box build with just sanding the rivets and using the right paint. The last time I built this kit I left the topsides unpainted blue plastic and used flat white latex house paint for the underside. You can imagine what it looked like but to me at the time it was a master piece.

Thanks for the inspiration to build this thing and thanks for the WIP shots of what I can look forward to.

Bill Gilman
I'm a little confused, did you get the Revell PB4Y-1 Liberator (the one that I'm working on) or the Revell PB4Y-2 Privateer (the ex-Matchbox kit)?

Charles Jones
The one you are building, the PB4Y-1. I forgot about that trench network that Matchbox put out. As I said, I'm going to do this out of the box as far as adding things mostly because all my WWII correct spares are long gone. Only thing I'm planning is taking down the rivets and preshading some of the panels. May have to cut stencils for the national insignia if the decals aged poorly.

TheMadModeller
If I remember right the old Revell PB4Y-1 is just a rebox of their B-24D Liberator from the same era? I have photos of my grandfather's built up B-17 & B-24 hanging from his garage ceiling in the late '60s and so opted to build the same albeit from a much later boxing of the same kit. Ugh, those molds were so long in the tooth that I can openly admit to having built limited run kits that were far easier to shape up into something decent. Along both the top and bottom fuselage join lines the plastic was curled inward requiring copious amounts of putty and sanding just to get a reasonable join. (Which in itself wasn't all bad, as it gave me the resolve to sand off all of those spurious saucer sized rivets and was actually the first model I wound up rescribing all of its panel lines. I still wasn't 100% satisfied with the end result and broke it down for spares about five years after building it. Back then the Academy kits weren't so expensive, so I picked up their PB4Y-1 as well as the so-called Matchbox "trench network" PB4Y-2, which I will probably fill in and rescribe the appropriate panel lines to scale. I like the Academy PB4Y-1 as it looks like a blend between the late marks of B-24s and the PB4Y-2, due that particular type of nose turret. (Correct me if I'm wrong in believing that no USAAF B-24s used that type of nose turret?) My own issues aside, you're doing an AMAZING job on this antiquated kit!! My brand of "aftermarket products" usually begins and ends at Evergreen Sheet Styrene, lots of studying photos, cutaways, parts diagrams and scratch building but seeing projects like this is certainly broadening my horizons. 🙂

Phil Marchese
I feel obligated to point out the Matchbox Privateer has raised detail throughtout most of the kit and where recessed, is much finer than say the new release Revell B-17 and many other "modern". 1:72 kits.

Bill Gilman
I believe it's correct that no USAAF B-24s used the Erco turret, but I could be wrong. It's always been one of the strikes against the Matchbox PB4Y-2 that the Erco turret is too large, and it does kind of look that way. That said, the Matchbox always builds up nicely in all of the samples I've seen. It's on my wishlist.

Erik Houghton
Leads one to wonder, Bill....is the Falcon Clear-vax Erco turret (in 'set 11 US Navy WWII pt.2') a "corrected" turret? It as well as several other pieces are provided specifically for the MB PB4Y, and the instructions seem to mention the kit nose turret inaccuracy issue.....