Valom's 1/72 scale
North American
B-45A Tornado

by Roland Sachsenhofer

North American B-45A Tornado

Trumpeter's 1/72 scale Vickers Wellington Mk.X is available online from Squadron

“Tornado” seems to be a well-liked designation for aircraft: a while before Panavia´s Tornado was named; there has been a respectable “Tornado” jet bomber in the arsenal of the newly formed USAF.

Being projected in the last years of the war, the B-45 Tornados prototype made its first flight in 1948. In the same year the first production B-45A planes had begun equipping the first front line bomber units.

Displaying a rather conventional design layout, die B-45 was planned as a stop gap to the more ambitious B-47 project. From 1948 on until 1959 the B-45 served in its intended role as heavy jet powered bomber and, after the Korean War had broken out, as “light” A- bomber, quite well. “Hot” combat sorties in Korea had been flown only by reconnaissance versions of the C-series. Two Tornados had been lost until the end of this war.

The B-45 had not only been the world’s first serial production four-engine jet bomber but also the first jet A-bomber. My model shows an early B-45A being used from the China Lake Naval Weapons Station in 1950.

Valom cannot be lauded too much for its model policy! I was really excited to see the release of this rather unknown and exotic aircraft this year.

The plastic parts fit quite well and reproduce the elegant and shapely lines of the Tornado very well and in good proportion. There is one very useful sheet of etched parts for the interior and the exterior, mainly for the wheel struts.

The decals are perfectly printed, very thin but a little bit instable when being moved. This caused some tense moments during appliance – and, I have to confess, it resulted in the destruction of both decals for the fin. I re-constructed these markings with the scattered remains of the original kit decals and some spare parts. That was quite easy because Valom had to lay a correction sheet for misprinted decals into the box. This was my rescue- but, please be very careful handling these brittle decals.

The metal-surfaces have been done with Alclad II metal colours.

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If you are interested in the building process and in the models parts, please have a look on the workbench at Scalemates: https://www.scalemates.com/profiles/mate.php?id=10148&p=albums&album=37323

As ever, remarks will be appreciated: ro.sachsenhofer@gmx.at

Model, Images and Text Copyright © 2018 by Roland Sachsenhofer
Page Created 1 January, 2018
Last Updated 1 January, 2018

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