Background 

The Douglas C-124 GLOBEMASTER II started life as an enlarged derivative of the earlier C-74 Globemaster I, which had a much narrower fuselage. It served as a SAC support Aircraft around 1950, then Troop Carrier and finally, in turn, MATS, and MAC. The 'CAC' markings on the tail band of some aircraft stood for Continental Air Command and there was also the Air Material Command 'AMC'. The last aircraft were phased out in 1971-2 era with the arrival of the Lockheed C-5A Galaxy which was able to transport outsize items that could not fit in the C-141 Starlifter. Other than the main “A” and “C” versions, there were the two YC-124B's with turbine engines and also a JC-124C (# 52-1069) which was used as an engine test-bed with attachments for new engine in the aircraft nose.

I had originally planed to go the Bradley Air Museum in Connecticut to take a lot of photos while I was in New England, but their C-124 did not survive a tornado in 1980. There are now only 7 C-124s on display in US museums. The closest East Coast museum that has a C-124A on view is Robins AFB in Warren-Robins, Georgia or Charleston, South Carolina. As for the USAF Museum C-124, the original prototype C-124 was cut up rather than moved when the museum moved from Patterson AFB to its present site at Wright Field. However, they then obtained another C-124C from the Air National Guard which is currently on display. I was able to do a thorough “walk around” of the C-124 at the Pima Air Museum, including the wheel wells. There are very good shots of the opened up engine nacelles, on page 11 of the Military Transports In Detail (MtiD) book. The following descriptions are compiled from personal research as well as the extremely helpful quotes from Charles M. "Bat" Masterson, who flew on the C-124 for 14 years, info from Richard Staszak, author of the MTiD book and Bill Cannon a retired loader on the C-124.

 

Differences between the C-124A and C-124C

Douglas only made two operational models of the C-124 but with several different configurations/series of each and all operated a little bit differently. "It was quite a challenge for the crew. All C-124As were modified for the radome but the early “A's” (called slick wings) did not upgrade to the gasoline heater systems in the wing tips (not fuel tanks)".

You need to decide if you are going to build an “A” or “C” model The Airmodel plan is a mid production A model with minor errors. Note the hinge fairings on the ailerons. Early “A’s” had full span flaps. The ailerons would extend and retract with the flaps for the first 20 degrees. Late “A's” and all “C's” had partial span flaps. There were no hinges on the ailerons of these aircraft. Don't put a “C” model propeller with square lips on an A model either, as those had rounded tips. The nacelles of the Airmodel plans are a hybrid of the early “A” models and all other models but the cowlings are serviceable for “C's”.

  • The top piece of cowling on later aircraft had a larger inlet air scoop for the carburetor and was more cylindrical as opposed to conical for Airmodel's kit.

  • The early “As” lower cowl did not have the oil cooler scoop. It was blended to keep the cowl streamlined. So both the top & bottom pieces on the “As” were pretty much identical.

  • All later Aircraft had the 'orange peel' cowling, which was hinged at the back and could be swung or peeled open. The early “As” had sectional cowling and were removed piece by piece.

  • Only one Aircraft, an early C (#510177) from MATS Pacific, was modified with air intake scoops on top of the nacelles for test purposes. It was supposed to improve the airflow and decrease the temperature of carburetor inlet air. It didn't increase performance enough to be cost effective and it increased the susceptibility of carburetor icing. After the test period that Aircraft was returned to its original configuration. 

  • All other Aircraft had the carburetor air-scoop built into the top section of the cowling and air entered the scoop right behind the prop.

  • There was another one-off test aircraft used as an engine test bed

 

Notes on construction of Airmodel C-124 in 1/72

This Kit is recommended only to experienced modellers if some internal detailing is required. An average modeller can achieve acceptable result if finicky areas are avoided. Detach all components from backing in the usual fashion and proceed as per instruction except for the items below.

The wings were constructed using the two top and bottom halves. The wings require each two parallel spars at the 1/2 and 2/3 mark extending about 5 Centimetre towards the center. You need good solid plasticard stock, preferably that nice dark grey nearly rubberised stuff from “Aircraft In Miniatures” as it bends quite a bit without cracking. Glue a fake non structural spar at the front wing panel line in the area of the inboard nacelle if you plan to detail the interior of the wheel wells. You will have to cut a few notches into it to make room for the gear retraction jacks. Also remove lower wing surface inside of nacelle to leave a large opening for all the interior detailing. I also removed the wing/fuselage fairing on the top wing surface, as it got in the way, and replaced the area with a strip off plasticard so that the wings are one solid unit for removal. The joint need some filling and sanding recreate a smooth finish to the upper surface of the wing.

The flap hinges need a lot of work. First reshape from triangular to elongated form by chopping off bottom, cut into 2 section (front and rear), reinforce with plasticard sandwich center and then add 2 or 3 corrugation "lines" made out of stretched sprue on innermost hinges. 

The engine nacelles need even more work. You need to reinforce the front with plasticard, sand off bogus exhaust pipes and then paste on Miliput to restore surface. You also need to saw off the front of the inboard engine nacelles and invert as top and bottom are mixed up. You need lots of Miliput to correct nacelle profiles over the wings as no two kit nacelles are the same! Then you need to reshape gasoline heater on wing tips, particularly exhaust system. Best to fill with Miliput, sand off all detail and replace with scratch-build card items.

The picture in the MTiD book of an open engine inspired me, but its from an angle, with the rear portion a little dark. Buying the Engine & Things P&W 4360 is the only method to attain a fully detailed engines as no big 7 cylinder engine banks other than the Aeroclub engine fronts are commercially available. So, I have two detachable cowlings with fully detailed engines on one wing and fixed ones with Aeroclub engine fronts on the other. Even old Jane’s pictures of the engine circa 1956 are on a mostly frontal angle with poor detail of sides and back. One Could chop up several Airfix B-29 engines and reassemble in desired shape, but this seems fiddly without major motivational transplant. The E&T engine then still needs a lot of cleaning up, cabling and exhaust pipes out of stretched sprue as well as fine silver wire. Colour instructions and photocopied pictures in E&T kit are very usable. If you plan to show the engines open, please refer to my rough drawing of the engine mount arrangement.

 

C-124 engine mount detailsC-124 engine mounts

 

It will give you some idea of how it was. “The engine was bolted to the nacelle by a mount ring which encircled the engine impeller section (internal supercharger) between the accessory and power sections and mated to the engine itself just aft of the power section (cylinder banks). The ring attached to 12 struts, 6 on each side that in turn were connected to the firewall by 6 mount bolts, 3 on each side. To visualise this, imagine a bolt connected to 2 struts spread apart like a V with the open ends of the V attached to the mount ring. The mount bolts were connected to receptacles at the 1:30, 3:00, 5:30, 7:30, 9:00 and 10:30 O'clock positions of the firewall. Bat recalls "The impeller, or as we called them, blowers, were internal engine driven 2 speed superchargers. The 'A' models had a Variable speed blower and was called an Automatic Engine Control (AEC). An Alternator is nothing more than an Alternating Current (AC) generator. The main generators were Direct current (DC). We can't tell them apart by just looking at them. Back then DC was easier to use since it did not require a constant speed to operate an electrical system. DC systems were susceptible to arcing at higher altitudes but were acceptable in the C-124 since we rarely got higher than 10,000ft. The inboard and outboard engines were installed using the same procedure. They even had a hoist that could be bolted to the nacelle / wing so that an engine could be changed in an austere environment. The only difference between inboard and outboard engines was accessories. The outboards each had a 115V variable frequency Alternator that was used exclusively to de-ice the pilot, co-pilot and center windshields. The inboards each had 2 hydraulic pumps to power the hydraulic system.”

“The whole engine build-up package is in front of the firewall and ends just aft of the exhaust pipes. Now, just aft of the last row of cylinders (A row) the accessory section was enclosed with curved fairing from the base of the power section out to the outside diameter of the engine cowling (orange peel) then straight back to the firewall. A lot of people mistake this curved part as the firewall; it is not. It is the fairing for the exit of the engine cooling air. This curved area equalled the length of the cowl flaps. The top and bottom areas of the engine were solid and housed the carburetor air-scoop (top) and the oil cooler scoop (bottom).  The C-124 used a modified short stack system. That is, a header stack is attached to each cylinder. Rows A&C and B&D were connected together and, in turn, to the exhaust 'short stack.' This stack was anchored to the nacelle and incorporated a ball joint so the stack could move to compensate for engine torque. This arrangement was used for the top four rows (16 cylinders). The bottom 3 rows had headers as above but they were connected to a larger collector manifold. So, if you looked at the side of the engine behind the cowl flaps you would see, from top to bottom, 2 small 'short' stacks, the large collector stack and then 2 more 'short' stacks, a total of 5 on each side. All of the cylinders were baffled, that is, enclosed and covered to direct maximum cooling air available as equally as possible to ALL cylinders.”

Those are the dark areas in the MTiD book. The colour of the inside of the cowling, engine mount ring, struts are matt aluminium. I used grey primer for the engine casing and watered down Tamiya gun metal for the cylinders. You could probably use Alclad 2 Jet Exhaust on the cylinder heads, as this is available now Even if you don’t display the engines open, the wheel wells will be quite prominent on the underside and might need, either some basic treatment, or something more elaborate, as described below. The firewall has a large rectangular sectional door that allowed in-flight maintenance. According to Bat, “you could removed generators and hydraulic pumps from the engine accessory section in-flight. It's no fun since the engine had to be shut down in order to accomplish this.” The firewall doors were rectangular two piece sectional doors about 18-20" wide by 30-32" long. The firewall door was situated in the middle of, and was part of the firewall.

 

Wings and engines assembled

  

C-124C Main Gear Bay

Looking carefully, you can see how the firewall door is positioned directly in front of the nacelle catwalk looks. It was a two-section vertical drop type door. In the center of the top section was a 'D' ring type handle that was rotated 90deg to open the door. The handle was attached to 2 18" locking pins. When engaged, they were extended into locking pawls on the firewall proper.

“When the doors were opened, after unlocking, it was allowed to drop straight down, gently of course, so that they didn't get in the way at all. When the lower section bottomed out the top section continued to drop until it also bottomed out. When the doors were in this position, the top half was stowed immediately behind the lower half. .....kind of stacked sideways. Pretty neat & simple.”  

The gear well was big, so don't forget the 82.5 gallon oil tank that was located just behind the firewall at the top of the nacelle.  “It was stainless steel to protect against FOD.” That oil tank actually really helps building the model as It provides a secure mass to drill holes into and anchor the top engine struts. All 4 engines are identical. “The hose at the bottom of the tank gravity fed oil to the oil pump. Oil was returned to the tank at the top (you can't see it here). The oil filler cap is at the top of the tank and is accessible from the top of the wing.” The crawl-ways (tunnels) were installed in the wing leading edge and ran from the fuselage to the outboard nacelles. “The outboard nacelles were roomy and you could almost stand up straight. The inboards were something else.” There was a narrow catwalk installed from the back of the gear well to the firewall door.

It was fitted over the gear strut and between the two main gear tires. “It was a real adventure each time.” The main gear retraction cylinder was attached to the front wing spar. The catwalk would never hold that much weight. “There was no catwalk directly through the inboard nacelles, as there was no room when the gear was retracted. You had to cross across the narrow extension behind the wheels and climb up to the catwalk between the wheels over the gear leg if we were going to an outboard engine.” The wheel wells were “interior green” as were the entire leading edges of the wing. The flash made it look a little yellow in the model picture. The actual tunnel entrances in the wheel-wells did not have mesh to ward off birds etc. Bat recalls “Just before you went into the tunnel you called the co-pilot and asked for "GEAR HANDLE UP," this pressurised the gear retraction cylinder to the retract (up) position. Normally the gear handle was placed to neutral on the after takeoff and climb checklist after the gear was retracted. This meant the gear rested on the up-locks most of the time. We never went into the tunnels above 10,000 feet [altitude], so it was pretty easy for a "young" man to crawl the tunnels.”  “The main gear doors were retracted mechanically by the main gear strut itself. Each door had one  link that attached to a rotating locking pawl just under the nacelle catwalk. About half way up the main gear strut there were two roller bars attached by collar to the strut housing. When the gear was retracting the roller bars engaged the locking pawls and pulled the doors closed behind the gear. Pretty simple really. At the lower right portion of the picture you can see the roller bar on the main gear strut. On either side of the retraction cylinder you can see the pawl jaws hanging straight down. You can also see that the retraction  cylinder is mounted on the bottom of the front spar. 'Pawl' is probably a misused word, technically, but that's what we called almost everything that was used to hold or retain something. As I understand it, a pawl is a notching devise that stops and or holds something like the catch that holds a ratchet wheel. The roller bars for the main gear doors are pawls but the receptacles that hold the locking bars on the fire wall doors are not, but they seem to get called pawls anyway ............ confusing?” 

The vacuform kit wheels are about the right size, but hubs are totally inaccurate. No aftermarket or injection moulded kit wheels appear appropriate. Unless you can master your own hub in resin, take it or leave it. The struts were made from sprue.

The prop is a bit more of a problem as the kit didn't come with one. I have never been able to scratch built a prop that could last more than a few minutes. Aeroclub do however have a Curtis 3 bladed 15 foot diameter spinnerless prop for a KLM Lockheed Constellation variant which I can use until a correct 17' item comes along. The good thing with props is you can always replace them, when someone comes out with a better one! Just don't put a 4 bladed prop, on unless you are building the prototype, in which case you remove the nose radome.

The tail plane was constructed as provided, with just some sprue to strengthen the leading edge, a strip of plasticard at the rear before the trailing edge in order to help with adhesion. I also added some guiding strips in the interior in order to take two spars that would go through the fuselage into either side’s tail plane. 

Somebody could build the Douglas C-74 "Globemaster I", which uses the same wings in the same manner, if they can figure out what to use for the fuselage, but that would be a whole new article.

As usual, the fuselage halves were sanded down, windows were drilled out, and nose gear doors and cargo doors were cut out and then put aside. The nose gear well is a good place to start in the fuselage and a simple affair in comparison to the main gear wells. It is nearly rectangular in shape, with only a few frames.

The interior of the nose wheel well and doors were matt aluminium, not “Interior Green” like main gear wells. The front wheel is also a relatively simple and squat two wheel affair that only needs to add a few oleos and struts etc out of sprue. 

The nose gear doors only need to be sanded nice and smooth and some simple panel lines carved into them. The nose gear bay provides the necessary structure for the cargo floor to rest on in the front, as well as several other bulkhead to the rear.

Nose gear and bay

The fuselage shell is supported by a series of bulkhead under the floor and ribs on the side of the main cabin “All C-124's had 4 compartments below the main cargo floor between the nose wheel well and the cargo elevator well. They were labelled O,P,Q & R. Each of these, except O, were accessible from a hatch in the center of the cargo floor. "P" compartment contained the entrance doors to the tunnels. When we first started flying them there was requirement to check each accessory section once each hour of flight. This compartment. also contained the center for electrical, hydraulic and compass systems. We also kept our tool boxes there. It was a large compartment that you could stand up in. It also had a hatch that opened down in of the bottom of the compartment. The center point refuelling panel was installed In the door recess of this hatch on the right side. The refuelling connection was in the bottom of the fuselage just aft of this door.”

The MTiD book has good drawings of the Flight deck. I imagine there were several different versions of the Flight Engineer's panel as “A"s and early “C"s had a porthole while late “C"s didn't. I just took a piece of plasticard, drilled a few dials into it and painted it black. I thought the desk would be wood colour, but it's virtually invisible throughout the cockpit. I built the compartment walls for latrine and crew rest area for added structural integrity of the fuselage but did not furnish them since they are invisible as well I also omitted interior details of the crew rest areas in the rear fuselage which I was surprised even existed as the B-36 Peacemakers had theirs removed in order to save weight. That and the MTiD book is why originally thought there was no insulation in the fuselage. Some of the museum or Davis-Monthan C-124s must have been partially stripped for whatever reason for them to think that their was no insulation. Interior pictures of ones taken in the mid 1960s certainly looked immaculate and well looked after.

The picture of the Aircraft's open cargo bay door from the November 1951 issue of Flight helped hugely in detailing the inside front of the aircraft.

Cockpit & interior

I thought there was something absolutely odd with the Airmodel plans which permanently connected the flight deck in a straight line with the removable top deck of the rear aircraft. No outsize equipment could have moved up the ramp in that configuration. If the cargo door remains closed, it is however advisable to built your C-124 with the simplified cargo floor as advised as this greatly helps structural integrity. The slope in the crew rest compartment behind the cockpit is step wise. I did leave second cargo deck out, though I regret it from structural integrity view point. With Richard Staszak's input on the drawing and cut away of the cockpit in the MTiD book I was able to eventually get the exact configuration.

 Interior diagram

Old Douglas drawings for a display model showing the relative location of the inner floor heights served as masters for the enclosed scale drawing and provide you with a sketch of the floor positions. Unfortunately, I have no completely accurate data on the inner ring frame spacing's. Looking at the various pictures I would guess the door frames are on 2 foot centers with the 3 at the front on 1 foot spacing's. The inner cabin area seems to have ring frame spacing of 2 feet. It would seem that panel line markings appearing in the closeup pictures in the MTiD book could also be used to establish the position of some of the major ring frames in the fuselage. Be sure to include the rails for the cargo crane above the second row of windows as it adds a little extra strength to the fuselage.

I was also able to build my version of a "carbon fibre reinforced wing box," a plasticard box reinforced with sewing thread wrapped around and coated in superglue which allow me to remove the wings for transporting the aircraft to shows and the like. The box seems to be able to take a huge amount of Gs without cracking. The technique has application for many other straight wing vacuforms. After all, carbon fiber is just a bunch of half burnt string wrapped around a form and impregnated with some resin.

 Wings and wing box

I built a wing box out of 4 plasticard plates, simply wrapped a couple of bands of sewing thread around it and doused it with super glue. The elongated wing spars simply slide in and out. Judging from initial tests of yanking it up and down with the pre build wings in place, the box can take about 6 or more Gs. I installed it in the fuselage with the cargo floor acting as some sort of keel. Right about now, you’ll want to fill the inside of the radome with Miliput. This will keep it from collapsing, when you sand it nice and smooth later.

When you have the wing box, the bulkheads, the cargo, floor, the cockpit in place, you can start thinking about painting the interior. From some the photos it appears that the interior fuselage side walls of late survivors have no sound absorbing material, other than on the roof section. Likewise the doors are devoid of any sound deadening material. Based on comments from others who have been involved with the C-124 and some coloured photos I have of the cockpit area, the interior areas of some late C-124s are painted Interior Green, FS 34151. Earlier in their career, the interior of the aircraft was silver. This was the colour of the temperature and sound proofing material that covered the entire cargo area. It had the texture of blankets. Maybe you can use some sort of packaging material to simulate this. I just used the paint. The cargo floor was made of 3/4" treated plywood. “It was very strong and was lacquered and looked not unlike a hardwood dance floor. A sort of a light rum colour with black longitudinal anti-skid strips the length of the floor.” The 2nd floor was also matt aluminium, but this will be invisible except in the next picture. “The upper decks were almost always installed. They were sometimes removed if the mission directive required it, but most of the time they just removed the stanchions and rotated the deck halves so that they hung straight down. That's what we did when we loaded that big trailer. The overhead cranes in the picture are positioned over the elevator platform and the big hole (elevator well)."

 Interior details

The average modeller may not want to include this much detail in the kit this far back from the front or want to weaken the structural integrity of the fuselage in that part by cutting huge holes into the body, but someone will want to know. The large section of the floor, the platform, could be picked up by the cranes (hoists) and lowered to the ground. You could load the platform then lift it up into the aircraft. Then traverse the whole thing forward to unload in the front of the cargo compartment.

"Mostly we lowered the elevator platform to the ground, moved it out of the way and loaded all kinds of stuff like engines, props, jeeps and generators. This elevator well was also used for airdrops”, retired Flight Engineer Bat Masterson reminisces, "there was a crew rest area with 3 bunks and a crew latrine right behind the engineers panel which was behind the flight deck, along with a galley that consisted of a food oven and coffee jugs. The bunks down stairs were local mods that the crews asked for and were added much later.” There were further bunks behind the right rear cargo compartment bulkhead. “Let me tell you it was some of the best ZZZ time that absolutely ever was. The undulating drone of P&W 4360s were like a lullaby. Next are the urinals, they were on the aft left side of the cargo compartment.” 

The colour of cargo compartment behind the clamshell cargo door but in front of crew ladder (no insulation on ribs until further aft ) was matt aluminium.

You will need to reinforce the fairing between wing and fuselage, removed from the wing earlier, and improve the surface with Miliput. They were originally part of the wing structure, which was useless to me, so I cut them off and glued them directly to fuselage with serious internal ribbing to make sure this non structural component can survive handling, transport, not to mention considerable sanding in order to make it blend in. I also attached reinforcement into the fin in order that it maintains its shape.

Once you have glued the fuselage halves together, I attached the canopy, which required considerable blending in. The cockpit bulkhead ended up a little bent, but this was invisible after painting. There is also an intake at the top rear, which required some patience. Then, you will need to rescribe the hatches, doors and any other panel line you deem as being particularly important. Lines on the sides will add a little depth to the model. 

Other cleaning up is as per usual Vacuform kits. Proceed with undercoating with Halford's white or grey and painting as per chosen version, preferably from private photo hoardings or MTiD book. You will need to stock up on large USAF decals, Stars & Bars and Letrasets as kit does not include markings of any kind. I painted my C-124C in a MATS Pacific scheme with a white top, as that seemed a little more cheerful. All natural metal aircraft will be a little easier to paint. There are nice insignia blue cheatlines between the white and silver parts, as well as a blue strip surrounded by yellow on the tail, seen here while it was being masked. This required yellow lettering, where I hand painted white letters. 

As I want to use my C-124 to pose with heavy ordinance such as an AGM-28B "Hound Dog" or medium weight armoured vehicles, I chose to model the kit with open cargo doors. These had been cut out earlier and left aside until now. The cargo doors involve dozens of ribs (each with an average of 10 holes drilled in) and hundreds of stringers attached to the vacuformed shape . I attached the cargo doors to the fuselage via hinges made out of bent paper clips, which mimicked the real ones. Doing them out of plastic, would have been doomed to failure. The colour of front clamshell cargo doors and the elevator well doors were both matt aluminium.

 Nose & cargo doorsCargo ramp

Various published pictures of C-124 ramps as well as the MTiD book were used to construct the cargo ramps out of plasticard.  The cargo ramps were made up of three hinged pieces that were retracted into the front part of the Aircraft beneath the flight deck and held in place by 2 mechanical locks and hydraulic pressure. The toe piece was manually operated and flipped 180 degree on to the 2nd section and mechanically locked down. The third section was anchored to the bottom fuselage flood area. A two cable sling was attached to this section and in turn attached to the retraction cables. As the ramps retracted, the hinge between sections 2 & 3 allowed the ramps to 'break' and end up at right angles to each other by the time the 2nd section was lifted off the ground. It was pretty simple and worked very well.

With a little ingenuity small enough hinges can be created so that it will retract when the clamshell doors are closed. This worked for a while, but eventually, the brittle plastic gave way, and the ramps are now for display only.

Let's discuss loading cargo. Bat Masterson "flew into Vietnam in the early 60’s to Tan San Nhut, Danang and Camh Ranh Bay mostly. One time I carried 9 tons of wooden step ladders into Tan San Nhut. Would you believe the mission was classified at the time? Another time it was a combination load of celery and money. 17,000lbs of celery stocks and a cargo pallet full of cash for the monthly Marine payroll. I include a picture ( see right) of the largest load, bulk wise, I ever carried. This picture was taken in the early 60s and is a little blurry as it was taken out of focus. It was taken on San Salvador Island in the Caribbean. We used to fly down the Atlantic Missile Range from Patrick AFB at the Cape. We were putting on the van only and as you can see it was close. We had to pump up the nose gear strut to its max extension with compressed air so the darn thing would have enough clearance. We loaded the trailer on the aircraft with the tractor and then unhooked the tractor and drove it back off the ramps. This was one of telemetry vans that we carried all over the place, it seemed. It kinda looks like snake devouring another snake, Huh? This should also give you a little clearer idea of how the ramps looked and worked. Some of the stuff we carried were crash trucks to deal with Aircraft fires, fuel trucks, Redstone rockets."

Loader Bill Cannon writes "We loaded everything that would fit into the aircraft, from small to large---Thor missiles, Hound Dogs, etc. You name it, We probably carried it. The C-124 could carry 95% of all ARMY equipment at the time up to about 35000 lb." Attached are diagrams of how various helicopters were loaded on the C-124. 

In order not to transform the aircraft into a tail sitter when loading it, you had to brace the rear fuselage. The one piece triangular tail stand had a bar and pin to disconnect & connect On the photo of the tail with stand, please also note air scoop in front of tail.

The size and complexity of the kit, especially if adding any internal details, are very challenging and probably a sure fire way of contributing to your local psychiatrist's bottom line. Do plan on spending several months of heavy work most evenings and most weekends to finish this model. The finished kit will, however, offer you an unusual and rewarding addition to any collection of USAF post-war transport. "Old Shaky" did faithfully serve for over 2 decades in the twilight of the piston and Avgas era as well as the entire Korea and Vietnam epoch before the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy pushed it aside. A useful companion kit is the Douglas C-133 “Cargomaster” built by Gene Hooker in the 1980s, or the Nova or Combat model C-141, which is currently on my assembly line.

 The completed model

 

Recommended Accessories

Engine & Things #72003 P&W 4360 Engines (resin) (PO Box 48013 St Albert, Alberta, Canada T8N-5V9

or Aeroclub E064 P&W 4360 Engine fronts (white metal)

Aeroclub P103 Curtis 3bld 15' propellers (white metal)

 

Bibliography

Military Transports in Detail, Vol. 1; Richard Staszak & Nancy Staehr, Air Transport Publications, PO Box 586073, Oceanside, California 92058-6073 USA

Flight, 16 November 1951, Page 615

Jane’s All the World's Aircraft, 1956

MAP

 

I suggest that you contact the following direct sources for information on the C-124. David W. Menard, 5224 Longford Road, Dayton, Ohio, 45424-2547 USA is my source for information in the USAF archives at the USAF Air  Museum, which has a C-124 in its inventory. See if the museum has a copy of the service manuals for the C-124. Possibly, someone at the museum could look into their aircraft for details and sketch out a picture. 

Thanks also to my friend Charles M. "Bat" Masterson who flew on “Old Shaky” and enabled me to finish this model.

Model, article & photographs by Alex Hunger