As I posted in the new books thread I recently bought the excalent reference book Consolidated Mess by Alan Griffith. The book is a well of information on the turret nose models of the B-24, and wile studying it I confirmed the type if waste windows the B-24H-20 had that I had found myself through studying old photos. The bad news is that I realised that the nose of my model is totally wrong! First, it DOES have the emerson nose turret, all B-24H's did, so I'm scrapping the idea of using the A-6B vac turret and going with the kits Emmerson A-15. The problem is that while Academy calls this kit a B-24H, the design of the nose is that which was used for many of the B-24J's and none of the B-24H's. The B-24H, either those made my Ford or by any of the other B-24 manufactures used a nose turret kit provided by Ford which is identified by the "S" shaped panel line to the rear of the turret.
The first two pictures are from profiles I found that show very well the differences between the B-24J that the kit was patterned after and the B-24H which it should be. B-24J is on jeft and B-24H on the right.
I just couldn't let this stand now that I knew the truth, so here's what I have been doing the last few days:
Picture 3 I filled in the bombardiers side windows. Some H's had these but "Booby Trap" was not one of them. I also scribed in the "S" shaped panel line that was typical the Ford nose turret kit. All panel lines forward of this were then filled.
Pictures 4-6 The process of building the shroud to fit to the turret. This was very delicate work and took some time.
Picture 7 the finished nose to compare to the profile pic. The bomb sight window is still not correct, the rear frame being vertical instead of angled, but I will deal with this my masking it at an angle before painting.