1/72 Monogram NB 52A and X 15 

by Toby Bird on Dec 7 2003

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Building this pair of kits was a bit of an internet adventure with lots of help from people around the world, more about that later.

The X 15 was and still is the fastest plane ever built, capable of travelling at Mach 6.7. There were 3 of them built, 2 can be found in museums and on crashed. when fully loaded with its external tanks the X 15 weighed 25 tons, that's quite a weight to carry and then drop from under one wing so the B 52 was something special for the task.

Monogram issued the 2 kits in one box a number of years ago and you can still get it on e-bay if you're willing to pay 150 USD. Well I wasn't so I took the old fashioned way of building something you can't buy. Of course when I was finished, Cutting Edge come out with the exact set of decals I needed for the B52, but that's life.  The X 15 launch pylon was carved from balsa wood and then sanded and primed a few times. To get the nice sharp edge where it meets the X 15 a filled the cavity in the pylon with milliput and then laid a sheet of grease proof baking paper over it. I then pressed the X 15 into the milliput and allowed it to dry. The paper came off easily and then all was needed to sand the milliput to the right external profile. A lot of dry runs and trimming of the pylon were then needed with the B 52 and X 15 together to get the right attitude and ground clearance for the X 15. A balsa tail plug was shaped and glued into the tail. The camera fairings on the starboard side were also carved from balsa wood and primed/sanded a few times. The notch was cut out of the starboard wing and boxed in with plastic card. 

The B 52 still has the 'goldfish bowl' view port on the clear sprue so this was used as-is. The fit of the main windows wasn't so good so these were taped over and the gap filled with milliput and sanded until smooth. New ejector seats were made using 2 spares left over from a V22 Osprey of all things, as there were only 2 posts for the pilots to sit on in the kit.

I didn't bother to re-scribe the panel lines on this, the plane is just too big.

The X 15 went together very quickly, the only change I made was making a new lower ventral fin.

Click on images below to see larger images

Then it was onto the painting. To get a good solid dayglo colour I first primed the dayglo and orange areas white. The dayglo, Humbrol Fire Orange, was built up of a lot of thin layers, this dayglo paint really doesn't cover very well. After hearing horror stories about how poorly it bonds a sealed the dayglo with a couple of layers of Xtracolour varnish. The rest of the 'plane was painted using Xtracolour paints.

Because of the size of the B52 I waited until painting was complete before I attached the wings.

Decals were a mixture. Tango Pappa provided the USAF, US insignia and the launch tally. Almark provided the 'High and Mighty' logo, the rest came from the kits. Everything went on fine with no silvering. A final coat of Xtracolour semi gloss sealed everything in.

The X 15 was glued in place and there it was, done. As you can see from the attached picture, this is a big kit. The Phantom in the picture is 1/48 scale by the way.

And now for the credits. Thank you :

  • Brian Lockett of the Goletta Air and Space museum for the colour scheme

  • Tom Baker of Tango Pappa for the super thin decals 

  • Sven Knudsen of the Ninfinger website for the NB52A mothership photo's

  • Mike Acteson of the IPMS UK Decal bank for the Almark set, a very useful service to everyone out there

Toby 

Photos and text © by Toby Bird