Scale Aviation Modeller International – April 2019

T

he Boeing B-17 Flying

Fortress is best known

from images of ‘boxes’

of USAAF aircraft

in natural metal or olive drab

inish droning over Germany in

daylight and being besieged by

swarms of Luftwafe ighters

and often as not trailing

smoke and sundry airframe

parts. Little known however,

is the use the RAF made of this

remarkable aircraft, in several

variants, but most notably as

the Fortress Mk.III, roughly

equivalent to the USAAF B-17G,

and used in secret operations

by the RAF’s 100 Group. 100

Group was a clandestine special

operations unit assembled

to deploy the increasingly

sophisticated Electronic

Warfare techniques then being

developed, and in particular,

through iniltrating the routine

bomber streams, to jam and

disrupt German ground-based

and airborne radars. At times,

German-speaking crew were

carried to impersonate German

Ground Controllers and so

mis-direct night ighters. The

Fortress Mk.III variants had the

chin and ball turrets removed

and a large chin-mounted radar

installed, together with various

transmitting and receiving

aerial arrays. The nature of the

technology being deployed,

and the rather luid operational

requirements of the emerging

operational doctrines meant

that 100 Group’s aircraft were

themselves hardly static in

speciication and internal it

in particular appeared to vary

signiicantly during their lives.

Airix have produced a

tidy Fortress Mk.III kit, based

on their 2016 B-17G, and this

kit contains all the original

parts, along with an additional

sprue (L) carrying the speciic

aerials, radar scanner and

plain tyres appropriate to the

RAF version. The clear sprue

is modiied to include the

nose radome. The 264 plastic

parts are very neatly moulded,

and the panel lines are much

more restrained than earlier

kits, they will no doubt recede

further under some paint. All

the control surfaces are separate

so some dynamism will be

easy to introduce. Two very

similar schemes are ofered,

these being #223 Squadron 100

Group, RAF Sculthorpe and

RAF Oulton. 1944. (Dark Earth,

Dark Green over Night with

painted radome) and ‘Take

Huw Morgan builds the 1/72 Airfix Boeing B-17 Mk.III

FLYING FORTRESS

SECRET 100

APRIL 2019 • SCALE AVIATION MODELLER INTERNATIONAL

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FE ATURE

BY HUW MORGAN

BOEING B-17 MK.III

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