Below are photos of my 1/48 scale B-17G diorama titled “The Final Landing”. It was built in 2011. The setting shows a war-weary B-17 coming back to its English airfield after another dangerous mission over Germany in 1944. The aircraft made a successful landing and was taxiing to its assigned parking location when failure of the right main landing gear caused it to swerve off the runway into the grass. I went to great lengths to duplicate the famous diorama that Master Modeler Sheperd Paine built for Monogram Models in 1975, which was featured in a four-page color brochure included with their B-17G kit. Hand painting the artwork on the nose of the aircraft was one of the features I was not able to reproduce. Several aftermarket resin and photo-etch details sets were used on the Monogram B-17G. About 75% of the total project time was spent building and painting the airplane, as it was heavily modified. The base is 3/4” thick plywood. The ground-work is Sculptamold, mixed with water and food coloring. The concrete runway is sand sprinkled over white glue. Only a couple of the kit’s crew members had to be modified to match the original diorama. The entire project took me six months to build. I am still blown away by the fact that Paine built his diorama in about two weeks! The last few photos were taken while the build was “in-progress”. I hope you enjoy the photos.
I actually attempted this myself but I tried it in my teens with no knowledge of Paine beyond those flyers in the kits.
My result was nowhere as impressive as yours. Yours is so good and such a great replication of the original that when I saw the first pic I immediately thought, “Is this the Paine diorama?”
I’ve actually pulled my copy of the flyer to compare them. You really captured all the major elements.
brekinapez/Johnny01/18bravo-Thanks for offering the the best compliment I could receive…saying the diorama is good enough (at a glance) to be mistaken for Master Modeler Shep Paine’s work!
Below are photos of my 1/48 scale B-17G diorama titled “The Final Landing”. It was built in 2011. The setting shows a war-weary B-17 coming back to its English airfield after another dangerous mission over Germany in 1944. The aircraft made a successful landing and was taxiing to its assigned parking location when failure of the right main landing gear caused it to swerve off the runway into the grass. I went to great lengths to duplicate the famous diorama that Master Modeler Sheperd Paine built for Monogram Models in 1975, which was featured in a four-page color brochure included with their B-17G kit. Hand painting the artwork on the nose of the aircraft was one of the features I was not able to reproduce. Several aftermarket resin and photo-etch details sets were used on the Monogram B-17G. About 75% of the total project time was spent building and painting the airplane, as it was heavily modified. The base is 3/4” thick plywood. The ground-work is Sculptamold, mixed with water and food coloring. The concrete runway is sand sprinkled over white glue. Only a couple of the kit’s crew members had to be modified to match the original diorama. The entire project took me six months to build. I am still blown away by the fact that Paine built his diorama in about two weeks! The last few photos were taken while the build was “in-progress”. I hope you enjoy the photos.
