Hi all, I’m at present building a Tamiya 1/48 Lancaster and have a problem. The bombs have a very thin yellow stripe and I have thought and thought on how to do this and come up with zero ideas. The stripe is actually on the cone which is making it almost impossible to accurately mask off. Anyone any ideas please?
If you have a small lathe or can chuck the bomb in a drill, you can rotate them and just touch a small brush to where you want the stripe. Another option is a thin strip of colored decal film around the bomb for the stripe.
Paint the area where the stripes go yellow. Cut thin strips of masking tape (the thin strips will be flexible enough to conform to the rounded ogive shape of the nose). Paint the bombs in OD or whatever base color they’re supposed to be. Remove the tape masks revealing the yellow stripes.
You can buy vinyl pin-striping tape (used by car painters) in widths as thin as .5mm. It’s supper flexible and will conform to compound curves quite nicely. However, thin strips of ordinary blue painter’s tape, if cut that thin, will also conform well to curves. Lay a strip of the tape off the roll onto a piece of glass, and use a metal straight edge and fresh X-acto blade, and you can cut strips down to almost hair-width.
Bear in mind David @Treforissa that at almost any point in the war, nearly every manufacturing company was involved in the war effort in some way but not every production plant had high dollar sophisticated equipment, point is a company that had been making picture frames for example is now making ordnance but doesn’t necessarily have a jig to support a 500 lb. bomb casing to paint the ID marking stripes on the bomb(s). So it is totally acceptable to hand paint your bombs if you choose not to go screaming mad trying to mask your pickles, but if you insist, you can tape or staple a fine point brush or a paint marker, to a flat wooden stick, like a painters stirring stick, with brush perpendicular to the stick and clamped to the edge of your work bench, you can then twist/rotate the bomb in your fingers (helps to have a toothpick or sprue stick stuck in the other end of the bomb as a handle) next to the paint loaded brush and paint your bomb’s nose. Just a suggestion to consider among the other choices.
Cajun 
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Microscale makes fine yellow stripe decals: Microscale Decals: HO Scale - Stripes - 1 and 2 inch widths - Yellow 116MS
Not to mention scuffs and dirt they collect on the way from the factory to aircraft.
While this is a later war, it illustrates quite well the condition bombs could get in.
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I do exactly as @SdAufKla suggests. That is what I did on this Avenger build. I think it turned out well.
If you don’t airbrush then the bomb chucked in a lathe sounds interesting
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For my recent 1/24 Typhoon rockets, I tried several approaches to getting the stripes painted on the cone. First, I did start with a coat of yellow for the stripes. I tried putting small O-rings on the rocket heads to serve as masking, but could not get the O-rings to stay in place for airbrushing the rest of the rockets. I then used some wall tack to put a small metal nut over the rocket tips, but while the tack kept the nuts in place, I could never get them aligned in such a way that appeared appropriate.
Ultimately, I donned a pair of Optivisors and put down a tiny line of yellow with the finest tip brush that I own. This approach produced satisfactory results.