Mach 2's 1/72 scale
RB-45C Tornado

by Rolf Blattner

  

Mach 2's 1/72 scale B/RB-45 Tornado is available online from Squadron 

The B-45 - first jet bomber of the USAF, the aircraft allowing the fledgling SAC to develop it’s competence and the last aircraft stemming from a development competition numbering three types.
An interesting subject in its own but for me irresistible in its strategic reconnaissance version.
Really something off the beaten track and accordingly also providing some obstacles.
If you would like to add the model to your collection here is what you may experience.

Judging from other modellers‘ remarks there seems to be a love-hate relationship with kits from
Mach 2 - unusual subjects, mostly not available from other manufacturers, not always easy to build...

Could it be Mr Palix has chosen his trade name with a link to German? Reading in German the manufacturers name "Mach 2" sounds exactly like "make 2".

To be honest, I almost had to do that.

Be warned – this is not the contemporary "Tamigawa" kit.

To start with – the instruction sheet is an A4 copy with 4 rudimentary drawings, box top and bottom yielding some colour information. Adequate for brave old hands I suppose.

The grey plastic used is thick and soft, the recessed panel lines not everywhere well defined and there are many sink marks.

Separating the parts from the thick gates needs care. A dry fit already showed some deficiencies.
Fuselage, wings, tail, wing tip tanks, everything was just a wee bit askew or not round. Juggling the parts did not help much.

Cockpit and Fuselage

The cockpit "tub" is wrong, missing a "galley" or "passageway" from entrance door on the left up into the cockpit.

The necessary modification is not very noticeable after the canopy is fitted but I found it worth altering.
I cut the left side of the "tub" provided away and fitted part of the left over console detail below the rim of the cockpit to the left hand fuselage side. The bulkhead between cockpit and navigator compartment was altered by cutting and opening the access to the "galley".

The front part of the fuselage seems to "turn left" just a little bit at the rear of the navigator’s compartment and the cockpit opening is asymmetrical and slants slightly to the right.

The diameter/geometry of the fuselage halves differed on my sample. This is especially noticeable in the area of the cockpit. You might want to try to correct as much as possible at the dry run stage. Otherwise you will have problems later when you try to adapt and fit the cockpit - as happened to me.
All these faults are beyond complete remedy after gluing everything together and fitting of interior detail.

I fitted the cockpit tub in the right fuselage, added the necessary support between cockpit floor and nose wheel bay, fitting and adding the bulkhead of the navigator compartment before joining the fuselage halves and the forward upper nose decking (glazing for the bomber version).

Be warned – that’s the point where you have to find room for at least 25 grams of ballast in the extreme nose ! With that big tail and a lot of thick plastik at the rear you will have a tail sitter with anything less. If you are doing the bomber version with the glazed nose you will have to pack as much as possible into the lower part of the nose (radome) and believe me, more than 30 grams will be taxing for the undercarriage struts as the model is already heavy enough on its own.

Ask your friendly tire dealer if you can have flat balancing weights for aluminum wheels and adapt it to the form of the radome bay or use fine lead shot.

Wings

Only after gluing the wings together I realised a marked dip or kink in the upper wing surface outboard of the engine pods, resulting in a noticeable upward bend of the trailing edge and a "hollow" look of the top surface.

The bend was (partly) overcome by manufacturing new ailerons and adapting the remaining trailing edge of flaps and wing with plastic putty and paring to a realistic look. No real remedy for the "hollow" look however if you do not want to apply a lot of putty with consequent loss of the existing panel lines and the possible need to modify the rear upper part of the engine nacelles.

Actually the top surface of the wing is not according to plan and does not have a "straight" line from root to tip. I suppose this could be at least partly corrected by fitting a "spar" and forcing wing nose and trailing edge together when gluing.

The fault is not obvious at first glance when looking at the finished model but stands out when looking over the wings from head on.

That was the first time when I pondered the decision to "make 2" (i.e. a second one) or to try to live with the faults ! As getting the kit had already been time consuming enough I kept going.

Clear Parts

All clear parts are very thick and result in a distorted look. The navigators overhead window also did not fit and was undersize. I therefore discarded it and used a piece of clear plastic from a CD-case as replacement. The variety used was clear styrene and could be worked, glued, filed and polished like normal plastic.

The canopy is too broad judging from plan and pictures. It was sanded, adapted to the fuselage contours and used as a master to form a new one.

Engine Nacelles

Engine intakes and exhausts are not very detailed and convincing. I used Evergreen plastic tubing for both and made new intake cones from rod, using small lock washers for the first compressor stage.
I was possibly too intent on improving the intakes and did not realise until too late that the intake lips are angled – the lower lip being set back. Second "Mach 2" effect !

The engine pods do not have a positive location. A second time around I would first join fuselage and wings to allow checking proper alignment of the pods with the fuselage data line viewed in plan AND
with the undercarriage bays. Everything looked fine from above but the location of the u/c struts relative to the pods now differs on my example – "Mach 2" effect number three.

Fuselage, Wings and Empennage

At that stage I was more concerned with mating the wings properly and at right angles to the fuselage. Sounds easy enough but resulted in a lot of filing and filling of the joints on wings and fuselage until the left wing was no longer overtaking the right one.

I never trust butt joints, so I used tubing, telescoping 3 diameters to get a strong spar and support the wings beyond the undercarriage bays.

The same procedure was used for the horizontal tail where I used tubes again, suitably heated and bent to the correct dihedral in the middle and fitted to the fuselage first.

As I wanted a recce version with visible camera ports I cut openings in the lower rear fuselage for the 3 panoramic cameras, the rear oblique camera and cut out the bay for the 4 multiple split vertical cameras as per sketches from the book "spy flights of the cold war" by P.Lashmar. Camera windows were inserted using clear plastic from the CD case again. The cameras behind were simulated with tubing, painted matt black and filled with Krystal Kleer for lenses. Before inserting the camera bay I stuffed the fuselage with foam rubber fore and aft to avoid any "see through" effect and possibility of dust or particles getting on the camera windows from inside.

After puttying, sanding and polishing the windows were masked with tape. The whole operation was of course handled before mating the fuselage / wings & tail surfaces.

The completed model was sanded and rescribed where necessary.

After a definitive coat of suitably thinned Gunze Surfacer 1000 I airbrushed Humbrol Silver # 11 overall, followed by an overall sealing with Future. After thorough drying I shaded single panels with 5 different silvers, using 3M post-it notes and 3M post-it tape for masking.

After sealing again with Future the decals were applied. The kit decals are not to nowadays standard and better left alone. Fortunately I had the right size USAF and Star&Bar left over from an Italeri Canberra. The buzz number was made up from single characters from an old "Stoppel" decal sheet, bought more than 25 years ago and no longer available unfortunately. The characters are printed directly onto the adhesive – without any carrier film, difficult to apply but ideal for "silver birds". Plain decal sheet airbrushed black and yellow-green was cut and applied for the tail marking and the arrows on the tip tanks. The fuselage band was masked and airbrushed green, the yellow outlines added with narrow strips of yellow made from plain decal. After a final coat of semi gloss acrylic the rest was downhill – no need to explain the finishing work I suppose.

The kit was difficult to get, expensive and time consuming to build. Maybe my example was just a bad shot. Nevertheless, it gave me many more hours of modelling pleasure compared to a contemporary "shake and bake" kit. And you would never believe how many younger modellers have already asked "what kind of plane is THIS".

I am still wondering however, if I should have a go at a second one to apply all lessons learned.

Aviation News Scale plan by Mike Keep / Air International 1988 / IPMS USA Quarterly ??, details & markings by G. Knox Bishop / Wings Magazine ?? – "The last great Bomber Fly Off" by Joe Mizrahi /
Aeroplane Monthly 10/1994 / Alan Sutton, "Spy Flights of the Cold War" by P. Lashmar, 1996
2 colour pictures from http://www.photovault.com .

With many thanks to John Sheehan, Terence Marriot, Th. Messmer & P. Leuenberger for copies and data provided.

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images: 

Model, Images and Text Copyright © 2005 by Rolf Blattner
Page Created 15 August, 2005
Last Updated 14 August, 2005

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