To my knowledge, the all-new ICM 1/48 scale Martin B-26B Marauder plastic model kit is the fourth Marauder in 1/48 scale, after Aurora, AMT, and Monogram (with its ill-fitting tail and cowls).
The sturdy box contains 348 plastic parts, a 24-page instruction book with ICM paint references, and beautifully printed decals for three aircraft, one olive drab over neutral gray and two in natural metal; all three sport invasion stripes. The parts show no flash and minor mold seams. Surface detail is limited to sharp narrow panel lines and Dzus-fasteners. The kit contains no photo-etched metal details, but you won’t miss them because the plastic parts are so fine. My kit’s canopies were crystal clear.
The soft, flexible plastic means antennas and gun barrels bend rather than break if accidentally tweaked during construction. There are some strange marks in the plastic that I believe to be flow marks rather than intentional detail. Some were located near the edges of the fuselage and vanished as I eliminated seams. Others showed up on the lower bomb bay doors; I left these alone. During painting, I discovered faint sink marks on the wings above the main gear bays and under the guides for the wing spars.
When assembling the stunningly detailed interior, look several steps ahead for clarification because the instructions can be vague. At times, it was tough to tell where the arrows were pointing, and I was confused regarding the orientation of some of the parts. For example, I installed a bulkhead (Part C2) upside down but realized the mistake before the glue set. (The horizontal line is not where the floor meets the bulkhead, but for the turret support.)
ICM doesn’t provide nose weights, but the instructions recommend adding 50 grams to the empty compartment aft of the cockpit. I added wheel weights totaling 56 grams to keep the nose wheel planted.
After closing the fuselage, I slipped the optional closed bomb doors into the opening to mask the fully loaded bomb bay for painting. Unlike the Monogram kit, there were no fit issues with the tail. The one-piece upper horizontal stabilizer sets the dihedral without fuss.
Leave the side gun packs off until after applying the decals if you opt for marking Option 3, “Big Hairy Bird.”
The engines comprise 27 pieces each and if they don’t sit correctly on the firewall, you may have forgotten a part.
Assemble the main gear legs after painting. The instruction’s arrows are misleading: Parts F18 and F19 should only be glued to the shaft of the gear leg and at an angle to allow the leg to attach with forward rake and connect to the extension jacks (parts G22, G24, G25, and G27).
My typical clear parts glues did not work well to attach the kit glass. Gator’s Grip held for about 24 hours, and then the parts dropped into the fuselage. Elmer’s White Glue never set at all. I performed surgery under the rudder to access and re-mount the small windows above the elevators (parts H18 and H19). I also had to reattach the nose cone twice, along with remounting the nose gun’s ammo box. I finally settled on Evergreen Canopy Glue, which worked extremely well.
Exceptional describes the overall fit — mostly. The seams on the interior of the engine cowls needed some work, but they are predominantly hidden by the engines. Butt-joining the multipart cowls is tricky, so I used the firewalls to assist alignment. The worst were the main gear doors. I used clamps to hold them tight to the front and rear hinges as the glue set. Then I filled the gaps between the middle two hinges and the doors with superglue.
I had trouble applying the fuselage markings. The codes kept folding over on themselves and several decals set as soon as they touched the model. I was eventually able to refloat these and position them correctly, but remnants of ink are still visible where they first landed. Using a photocopy of the decal sheet, I was able to trim the unused codes to repair the ones that were damaged.
The panel lines are so fine that an enamel wash would not flow by capillary action. Instead, I flooded the surface which stained the underlying aluminum paint and made the airframe look dirty and well-used.
The finished ICM 1/48 scale B-26B Marauder plastic model kit scales out a little large compared to the specs of the B-26B-55 listed in B-26 Marauder in Action (Squadron/Signal, ISBN 978-0-89747-119-0), but almost perfect for the B-26C-45. I spent 80 hours assembling the kit. This exceeds my previous longest build, HK Models 1/48 scale B-17, by 10 hours. While it was a long build, it was not a difficult one. The fit is on par with the best. The level of detail is phenomenal. It may have taken longer to build than Monogram’s Marauder, but it was a lot more fun!