Let Me Introduce You To My Friend Glen

       He means to fire bomb the American forests of Oregon and Washington state after skulking across the Pacific on a Japanese submarine. The stresses of war sometimes stretch the creative mind of humans in odd directions, desperation can drive them to truly bizarre attempts. I will refer you to Housemartin's earlier article on this subject rather than try to repeat his essay here. I got involved in this because nobody makes a 1/200 scale model of a "Glen".  What is a Glen, you ask? It is a limited production floatplane intended to be stashed inside a waterproof hangar on Japanese submarines See below. Housemartin wanted me to make then for him.

     (Housemartin editorial addition) The "Glen", or Yokosuka E14Y, holds the distinction of being the only airplane to "successfully" attack the United States Mainland.  Several of them using incendiary bombs dropped their payloads on the Pacific Northwest trying to light the forests on fire (this did not work out as intended).  They also bombed several coastal cities in Oregon (these attacks worked out more or less as intended).  The same pilots who would bomb the forests were involved in the Madagascar campaign.  (End of editorial note)

   

       Housemartin has long ago learned that I have difficulty resisting a scratchbuilding or conversion project and likes to take advantage of that. In the past few years he has stepped up his game and has mostly undertaken the building of his own offbeat subjects, but, from time to time, he returns to me with an idea. In this case he asked me if I would convert some floatplane models into a slightly different configuration. By which he meant could I convert something that looked like this;

       Into something that looked like this;

       Being an idiot, I said "Sure, it looks pretty easy actually". and the rest is history. 

 

first you have to carve down the nose and install a cowling, then take some plastic tubing, 

split it and cut away the rear part to make the sloping back of the fuselage

 

then you add putty, but be careful because neither Squadron or Tamiya 

putty dries worth a darn unless it is 1/16" or less thick

 

then you dig out the "never going to dry" putty and add back in tiny amounts until

 you have closed in the open end of the tube so that you can start shaping the canopy and fuselage,

oh, and you sand, a lot

 

until something like a Glen appears, then you prime it and look for mistakes

 

then you sand some more with a finer grit paper

 

more primer and a touch more sanding and its off to the paintshop

 

carefully hand-painting the canopy was a pain

 

but symmetrical circles are nearly impossible,

 Housemartin assures me that he has decals to hand

       An interesting exercise. In retrospect it would have been easier and faster to scrathbuild the planes and then transplant the floats and struts from the 3-D printed models. Now he wants a couple of 1/200 destroyers and a light cruiser.....................