B25J Mitchell Bomber

This is the second B-25 in 1/48 I have built in the past 6 months, both of them being the Revell/Monogram kits. This glass nosed bomber version went together very nicely. Putty does't scare me and a bit was needed to make a seamless fuselage joint and again where the tail unit joins to the fuselage. Care must be taken when attaching the multitude of clear pieces as there are plenty of opportunities to mess up the canopies if too much adhesive is used. Clear canopy glue of any manufacturer reduces the risk of oozing glue. The bomb bay is snug so care must be taken to trim all pieces properly to ensure they all fit inside the small bomb bay. As mentioned elsewhere weight must be added as this, like nearly all nose wheel aircraft is tail heavy. Don't fret as there is room in the bombardiers crawlway and also between the engine and the firewall where plenty of weight can be secured to have this model sit on it's weighted wheels. As with most bigger models a lot of the small detail work of interior pieces will not be visible once the fuselage is joined together. Very little of the interior of the rear fuselage is to be seen so you could very easily not take the time to do up the ammo bins etc and no-one would notice. You would be better off taking the time to do a bang up jib on the bombay as the bulkheads and the bombs are plainly visible if you leave the doors open. The B-25J was a very popular aircraft and as such there is a large number of after market pieces and decals that are available allowing one to have a custom built aircraft that will truly stand out in a crowd of Mitchells. I would highly recommend this model to anyone who is looking to increase the size of their medium bomber air force. Cheers, Jeff

I built three of these for a Catch-22 diorama. I hadn't built a plastic model since the early 70's, so I did some reading of other's reviews both here and on forums around the net. The two most important things I picked up from those reviews were to use body filler around the wing to fuselage joints and also the top and bottom fuselage joints and to glue the windows in place with white glue instead of plastic cement. First, don't let the body filler thing throw you. It's really easy to sand and it makes the model look that much more real. Second, the white glue idea is excellent! I always hated the way windows came out when I used model cement way back when. Also, I used automotive pinstriping tape on the clear plastic instead of a mask. I painted it with the same green and brown I used on the rest of the plane and it worked excellent. Revell really loads this kit with lots of inside parts. I didn't quite get that since you can't see much of the inside outside of the cockpit and bomber positions so I didn't bother adding those items. And..AND..as I see others have stated, you DO have to add lots of weight to the front of the model to get it to stand on the nose wheel. I put the weights in the crawl space under the pilot's and also behind the pilots. All in all, it's a SWEET looking model if you put a little effort forward. Really, do the white glue and pinstriping thing to keep your aggravation level to a minimum :) The pinstripe size is 1/16 by the way.

I found this kit a blast to build. The thing really bristles with guns when you're done. Note that I had to add some additional weight in the front to keep it on the nose wheel (as opposed to sitting on its tail). It is a great complement to other aircraft in this scale and there are many decal options available for the kit. Great price for a fun build.