FS 2004
Weren't Marauders known as the Widow Maker? I recall that this was due to nasty stall tendencies traceable to short wings and too low airspeeds.
Weren't Marauders known as the Widow Maker? I recall that this was due to nasty stall tendencies traceable to short wings and too low airspeeds.
According to Mr. Gallagher, one of PPM's crew told him the plane was preparing to leave for Australia to meet the rest of the Silver Fleet. It was the last B-26 they saw at Dobodura.Originally Posted by Mick
Yes, and also "The Baltimore Whore" (for having no visible means of support) and several others. "One a day in Tampa Bay," they used to say.
Once the wings were made longer in later models the plane became much more tractable. It was never as easy to fly as the B-25, though.
When the war was over and the statistics compiled, it was found that the B-26 had the lowest loss rate of any Allied bomber.
Ah... By 1944 Australia can only have meant retirement to secondary roles, or scrapping. Still, for a plane to remain in service two years after it arrived in theater was a great accomplishment for it's ground and air crews. Over a two-year period it must have had more than one crew of each kind. It speaks well of the design, too.
An excerpt from: With The Fifth Army Air Force, Photos From The Pacific Theater, by James Gallagher;
"Through the years, I have kept in contact with one of the great Pacific aces, Robert M. DeHaven of the 7th Fighter Squadron, 49th Fighter Group.
In one of his letters, referring to the B-26s, he recalls: We called them the last of the Silver Fleet in as much as they were to be the last Marauders
to serve in the SWPA and were flying sans camouflage. I flew several missions escorting them on strikes to Salamaua and Lae in mid-1943. In all
honesty escorting meant rendezvousing with them over the target during the strikes and little more. They were so much faster than our P-40s so
we had to reach the target before them and then on the way home watch them fly off and leave us. They were such beautiful machines."
Here's another one, "Major Monsoon," 19th BS, New Guinea 1942.
Excellent Mick. All you need is the Silver Fleet logo on the rudder.
Boy, he was sure right! Beautiful they truly are.They were such beautiful machines.
So are all these paints coming out for it. An impressive collection.
Have fun all!
Pat☺
Fly Free, always!
Sgt of Marines
USMC, 10 years proud service.
Inactive now...
The real reason for the bad names were lack of proper training and procedures for new flight instructors, new pilots for the type, and mechanics for a high speed, short-winged aircraft. The early models that went to the Pacific did fine and they loved them. That's the difference in the experience of pilots and mechanics.
Good reading on the B26 here in the training manual (if you did not download it from an earlier link:
http://www.sim-outhouse.net/download...anualsmall.zip
My reference picture didn't show it on that plane. It was on another pane I plan to paint, and after a futile search yesterday, I guess I'm going to have to try and make one from scratch. Today's project is another one without the logo, but tomorrow's project will be to try to make that logo for the next paint job.
I have a profile with the logo on it, but it's so small and such low resolution that I can't just extract it and paste it on a texture. It would look too indistinct and blobby. I can barely see it well enough to know what I'll be trying for. The curved lettering will be a challenge, but I think I know a way to do it.
Is this better? This is "Heckling Hare" (serial #401488).
Thank you Mick; so many to do; so little time.
Yep, it's better! Thanks!
I might even be able to fiddle with it enough to make it look straight-on and flat, so I could just copy it and change the color. It's blue on the color artwork I found yesterday. That image has much lower resolution though and would look fuzzy on the model in the sim.
If I can't manipulate the image in the photo to make it look straight-on, I can still use it as a model to copy manually. I think I can do that, it's just basic shapes and some letters.
I'm not sure I can make the nose art on that plane look clear enough, but I'm going to try. I have a couple ideas.
You're more than welcome Milton!Thank you Mick; so many to do; so little time.
Thank you for the model I'm having so much fun with.
Anyone considering Mild & Bitter?
http://www.americanairmuseum.com/media/8184
Hey Mick,great work as always! I too have a soft spot for "meat-balled star".Looking forward to a OD version.Maybe something similar to Kermit Week's Marauder?
Joel
"Mild and Bitter" would be a real project for a painter... but if they pulled it off with all that detail, there would be ALOT of that version flying around in the virtual skies of flight sim.
BB686
"El gato que camina como hombre" -- The cat that walks like a man
Oh my, that's such a classic Marauder! But it's far beyond my talents to paint it. I hope someone will!
I have a couple early OD planes on my list, next after the last Silver Fleet bird that I've started working on. There was a B-26 unit in Alaska that flew them in OD with "meatball" stars and I plan to paint one of their planes. I think the Weeks plane was painted to look like one of those Alaskan planes. They don't seem to have had any unit markings, just the stars and serial numbers they came out of the factory with. After that will come one of the Marauders that showed up at Midway (and might as well have stayed home.) It will look like the Alaskan one but with the red centers removed from the stars.Hey Mick,great work as always! I too have a soft spot for "meat-balled star".Looking forward to a OD version.Maybe something similar to Kermit Week's Marauder?
Joel
After that... Well, as you may have noticed, so far I've painted planes that were either almost brand new, or in natural metal (or both.) That reflects my total lack of skill at weathering. The paint kit provides for an overlay of dust and grime, but no real weathering. When I look at pictures of Marauders in the European War I mostly see matte camo schemes with lots of heavy weathering. Lots of it! I'll have to leave those skins for more talented painters.
But even the most heavily weathered planes started out brand new and spotless, and there were some field applied camo schemes, like the few Marauders that were painted overall black for intruder work, that looked pretty spiffy to begin with. So I might do some European War skins. We'll see...
Excellent Mick,excellent!
Is there a cockpit drawing that clearly shows what gauges are where..?
I've not found anything on the net...
Working with Gaucho's superb graphic for a 2D panel...
Moving yoke gives it a 3D effect...
Seems to me you can see the gauges well enough on his graphic to determine what goes where, but I have attached one layout, but I think its a different version. Most of the proper doc I have are for early versions.
Here are some additional shots.
Thanks, it covers what I needed..
OK, here's my last 19th Bomb Squadron skin. It's got the "Silver Fleet" emblem on the tail.
I toyed with the idea of backdating the insignia to the red bordered style mandated for a couple months in the summer of 1943. One of the profiles I found of the plane was painted with a lighter silver surround, as if the red border had been manually removed. But I figured that made no sense; it would be so much easier to just overpaint the red with blue, which is what they were supposed to do. Then I saw another profile without any indication of repainting. Alas, I couldn't find a photo of the plane that showed the rear fuselage so I couldn't judge for myself. I finally decided to stick with the pictures, even though they aren't photographs. The insignia was painted that way so often that I believe there must have been units in the Pacific, maybe whole commands, that just never added the red borders despite the specification.
Anyway, here it is. Next I'm going to see what I can do for some olive drab Marauders.
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