Revell 1/48 B-24D Liberator built as an RAF Liberator B. MkII

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One of the best aspects of this job is the opportunity to build models that mean something special to a customer. I was approached by a customer in Canada whose great uncle, Warrant Officer Class II Thomas Edward Lavallee (R/117397), was shot down and sadly died over Bari, Italy on a mission to disrupt German/Italian shipping, flying in RAF Liberator II AL565 on April 27, 1943. Could I build a model of his aircraft?

Liberators in RAF service are not a particularly well covered topic, and reference data and photos are hard to come by. After a bit of research, my initial reaction was to turn down the opportunity because there are no kits out there of the Liberator II and generally I don't go in for a lot of kit bashing. However the personal connection was so compelling I persisted.

As said, data is hard to find but basically the Liberator II (sometimes called the LB-30) descended from the Liberator I which was basically a B-24A tweaked for the RAF. There is quite a helpful link here if you wish to know more. But back to the build. The closest generally available Liberator version in kit form to a Liberator II is the B-24D, but there are a fair few fundamental kit changes needed to even come close. I compiled the following list:

•  All engine cowlings and housings to be rounded instead of oval. 
• Removal of superchargers and addition of forward stub exhausts.
• Move dorsal turret in line with trailing edge of wings, and replace with Boulton Paul Type A turret with four .303 Brownings.
• Replace tail turret with a Boulton Paul Type E Turret with four .303 Brownings.
• Blank waist gun windows and replace with small gun ports, each with two .303 Brownings.
• Change Hamilton props to Curtiss shape with longer spinner.
• Single .303 Browning in nose glass (optional).
• Add single belly .303 Browning (optional).
• Shrink and move nose pitots to half way down the side.
• Replace nose astrodome with flat clear panel and create new one behind cockpit.

This may seem a small list to you scratch builders, but to me that's a pretty big job (especially the engine housings). And the preferred scale of 1/48 also meant that I was landed with the venerable old Monogram mould (now Revell) from the 70s. I have built this before (in J version) and to be fair it's not a bad kit at all, as long as you are OK with raised panel lines (which I am). 

I first spent a lot of time researching and gathering photos of the Liberator II, to be honest there isn't a lot out there, and much of it is contradictory and ambiguous. So using what I had and making a handful of educated guesses in some areas, the build was under way. I am mostly focusing on the Liberator II specific changes for the purposes of this article, this kit is exhaustively reviewed elsewhere.

So I blanked out the waist gun windows and created the small single portal and barrel holes needed for the offset FN-55 Browning mounts used on this aircraft, and also blanked the dorsal turret hole behind the cockpit, and cut a new one in line with the wing training edges, which is one of the more obvious differences between the Liberator II and the B-24D. Although not Liberator II specific, I did go to the trouble of installing the excellent Eduard bomb bay etch set for the B-24, I can't be 100% sure if it is all exactly correct for the Liberator II but there is no reason to believe it isn't.

And so on to the major kitbash element, the engine housings. The B-24D had oval shaped engine cowlings and housings in order to accommodate the superchargers. The Liberator II had round housings because there was no supercharger. And so I had to find some way of changing the shape and removing the supercharger mouldings. Much looking around was done to see if anything could be borrowed from another kit or after market parts in order to help do this but all to no avail. I finally came to the conclusion that I was on my own. 

So my solution was to remove a 5mm strip from the centreline of the nacelles and move the inboard half outward which resulted in pretty much a perfect round shape, but of course left some serious filling work inboard of the housing. Fortunately this solution also removed the bulk of the supercharger mouldings from the kit parts. Now, I may as a result have the engines a couple of mm more outboard than they should be but to my eye it's not noticeable and given that they overlap with the undercarriage structure there was no other practical solution. Measuring up against reference photos however I seem to have got it just about right.

I used card and Milliput to fill in the gaps and holes and spent an inordinate amount of time sanding and shaping until I was happy with the result. Of course the actual engine parts needed  reshaping to fit the new housings but that was not too difficult. Fortunately the Liberator II used the same (almost) Twin Wasp radials as the B-24D so no worries there.

The dorsal turret used by the Liberator II was a Boulton Paul type A, it looks very different to the one found on the B-24D. No such turret exists in the aftermarket so my only option was to purchase one of the new Airfix 1/48 BP Defiant kits and steal the turret from that. What was not so easy was the tail turret. There is no Type E turret anywhere in 1/48 unless you count the Fonderie 1/48 Halifax kit which has become such an icon of awfulness that it goes for insane money on Ebay. So I stole the rear turret from an old Tamiya Lancaster kit and spent a couple of days re-shaping, glazing, buffing, and scratch building the Browning mounts until I had something that broadly resembles the Type E in the dark with the light behind it.

One of the final significant alterations was to the propellers. The B-24D kit comes with "paddle" style props which look nothing like the Curtiss Electric ones used on the Liberator II. And once again, the aftermarket was no help whatsoever. So I had to set to with the sanding sticks until I had them shaped to pass for the CE props. I also scratch built the longer spinners they needed. In addition, the Liberator II appeared to have distinctive spinner back plates not seen on American Liberators  so I cut these from plasticard. 

Other alterations worth mentioning include building the gun mount structure inside the nose glass, although I opted not to install the nose Browning - nor in the belly (although I did create the ports) since no photos I have seen show them installed. I also created aerial pillars behind the inboard engine housings to support aerial wire to the tails, something unique to British Liberators as far as I can tell. I trimmed down the kit pitots and replaced the probe itself with brass wire, these were then installed on the sides of the nose rather than the top - another Liberator II feature. The exhausts were created from plastic tubing filed down for realism and installed in holes cut in the outside of the engine cowling.

Decals were sourced from spares - fortunately the Liberator II was more or less bereft of stencils and what markings it it has are RAF staples easily stolen from other decal sheets, including the AL565 lettering which I managed to cut and shut from existing 1/48 Lancaster sheets.

So, that just about covers the key bits worth knowing about. It's been quite an adventure for me, not being one used to so much kit alteration. But I am proud to end up with what is surely a unique model. A number of modellers have painted B-24 kits in RAF colours (can work for a Liberator III or later) but I can find no other examples of the Liberator II having been built, certainly with any attention to accuracy. And I hope it serves as a fitting memorial to W/O Lavallee and his crew.

Full photos of the finished article below, and you can see my full progress photos here.