They also serve who only stand and wait

Jon Tabinor builds Douglas's unglamorous and forgotten workhorse

- Jon Tabinor

B-18B Bolo 'ASW Version'

Kit No: SH72230

Scale: 1/72

Type: Injection moulded plastic, with PE and resin parts included

Manufacturer: Special Hobby

www.specialhobby.eu

Developed as a competitor to the B-17, Douglas’s B-18 was basically a DC-2airliner with a large, bulbous bomber fuselage added. Ordered in the depression-hit mid-'30s as it was half the price of Boeing’s machine, like many bombers of that period, the pace of technology soon showed it to be badly outdated. They found use either as transports, trainers, or operationally in maritime patrol and anti-submarine work of the American continent by the RCAF (named the Douglas Digby), the USAAF, and the Brazilian Air Force. In US service some were modified to the B-18B version with a SCR-520 centimetric search radar in an even more bulbous ‘schnozz’ with a cigar-like Magnetic Anomaly Detector (MAD) boom projecting from its rear. The USAAF deployed them to the Caribbean and Panama Canal Zone where armed with depth charges, antisubmarine bombs, and a couple of .30 calibre machine guns, they plied their lonely trade unsung and for the most part unloved, until replaced in 1943 by variants of the B-24 Liberator. Nevertheless, Bolos played their part and were a classic case of ‘something is better than nothing’ at a time when even the smallest threat of an aircraft might dissuade a U-boat from attacking a ship.