Finally, an 11 month late birthday bomber build, another ancient Airfix B-24J Liberator is done! But, I now believe both of the old-skool 1/72 scale Airfix Liberators I built have an inherent molding problem, possibly the result of being produced in France:

The old Airfix kit is way outdated, having been first produced in the mid-1960s, however, I think it has one thing going for it; it’s raised rivet details.

If you look at war time photos of bare metal versions of the real thing you will see clearly that the Liberator is covered in noticeable raised rivets, and the old Airfix engineers were obviously obsessed with capturing that look.

This recent Airfix bomber kit build, and the other B-24 bomber I completed a year prior,  suffered from the same problems; misshapen/warped fuselage parts. I realized both these kits were from the time period when Airfix was under new ownership that had moved production from merry ol’ England to France!

To deal with the warped/misshapen fuselage halves I had to cut off the mounting pins, then use plastic bread bag clips as ledges to force the starboard half to meet-up with the port half.  The back half was glued first, then after dry the front half was glued.

Bread bag clips:

Unfortunately, the tail end of the fuselage is short on the starboard side and has to be fixed with putty and sanding. This problem is also found on the original Made in England issue of the kit.

I have an original 1960s Made in England kit which does not appear to have the fuselage warpage problems:

See more of my model kit building videos in my YouTube channel’s ‘Model Kit Procrastinator’ Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLmSZxOl5e4&list=PLkZrLGwZbnj_VHa3s9lTJQv79UCXjvYX-&pp=gAQB

November 2024: Birthday P-47D Thunderbolt: Family connection, and made in U.S.A. Monogram -vs- made in China Revell!

February 2024 (the last year video):

Late Model Gift Build for somebody born on Xmas; Airfix Birthday Bomber