Early Boeing B17D Flying Fortress for Fs9

TARPSBird said:
I wasted about 1.5 hours of my life last night trying to get the "Swoose" logo onto Shessi's OD fuselage texture. Mick and others here are far better painters than I am so I will stand by and see what others can come up with. I was about to tape a piece of paper to my monitor screen and trace the bird off a photo.
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I think I can manage it. Hurricane91 sent me an image I think I can manage with if I can clean up the edges so it will look good on the texture file. The black undersides might be more of a problem for me than the artwork. You know how it can be with color changes.

I tried to post this reply yesterday but ongoing connection problems kept me from getting into the forum for a while, then when I finally got in and read your post I couldn't get the reply screen.

Anyway, I probably won't have time to work on the Swoose today. Maybe even for a few days. Or I might find time sooner than I expect. We'll see...
 
TARPSBird said:
Thanks Mick for your creative efforts. I'll be looking forward to "The Swoose"... It flies! :encouragement:
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Life has taken a turn towards the frantic and my hobby time has been very limited the past few days, and will probably remain so for at least a few more days. Even my current project with David has had to be short shrifted and the Swoose is on the back burner, probably until some time next week. But it hasn't been forgotten!
 
I haven't forgotten The Swoose. I've done some dabbling in the occasional free moment.

The Swoose moulted and grew new plumage more than once during its service life, so we will have to have more than one virtual Swoose. I hope for at least two and possibly three.

We have photos of The Swoose in Australia with the red centers of its insignia painted over and a great deal of heavy weathering on its black undersides, which were probably slathered with lampblack rather than paint. I'll paint that one if I can manage the weathered undersides, but I'm no good at weathering. The artwork is done, and it's the same for any time period.

We have a photos of The Swoose back in the USA, all gussied up for a war bond tour with the early wartime red centers added back to the insignia and a big Thunderbirds style flag panel on her nose. Her uppers look nice but the undersides are even more heavily weathered than in the war zone photos. As for the earlier livery, I'll do it if I can manage the weathering.

We also have photos of The Swoose in Panama, and I can definitely do that one. I'm curious to see if the flag panel can show up with any sort of resolution. I almost hope not, because then I'll have to make an authentic one, cutting and pasting from a graphic of a T-birds panel, all in the right places. If it's too small for that I can just use a section from a Thunderbirds flag panel. I have a good graphic of that.

It will be a while yet, but we will have our Sweese before too long.
 
Mick said:
I haven't forgotten The Swoose. I've done some dabbling in the occasional free moment.

The Swoose moulted and grew new plumage more than once during its service life, so we will have to have more than one virtual Swoose. I hope for at least two and possibly three.

We have photos of The Swoose in Australia with the red centers of its insignia painted over and a great deal of heavy weathering on its black undersides, which were probably slathered with lampblack rather than paint. I'll paint that one if I can manage the weathered undersides, but I'm no good at weathering. The artwork is done, and it's the same for any time period.

We have a photos of The Swoose back in the USA, all gussied up for a war bond tour with the early wartime red centers added back to the insignia and a big Thunderbirds style flag panel on her nose. Her uppers look nice but the undersides are even more heavily weathered than in the war zone photos. As for the earlier livery, I'll do it if I can manage the weathering.

We also have photos of The Swoose in Panama, and I can definitely do that one. I'm curious to see if the flag panel can show up with any sort of resolution. I almost hope not, because then I'll have to make an authentic one, cutting and pasting from a graphic of a T-birds panel, all in the right places. If it's too small for that I can just use a section from a Thunderbirds flag panel. I have a good graphic of that.

It will be a while yet, but we will have our Sweese before too long.
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Thanks for the updates Mick. I'm sure your Swoose paints will be as delightful as your B-17D and B-26 skins.
 
OK, The Swoose, actually three Sweese, are painted. Now I just have to find time to make screenshots and package them up for release. They are:

First, The Swoose as it appeared soon after its arrival in Australia in January 1942 with a fresh coat of camouflage paint. I found some photos of the plane a few months later when it was severely weathered, but several attempts to depict that only served to remind me that I can't do weathering worth swat, so I abandoned the attempt. In the words of a great American philosopher, "A man's gotta know his limitations."

Next, The Swoose as it appeared in the USA in 1943 after being repainted and spiffed up for a war bond tour. It looks like it did in January '42 except for the addition of a flag panel on the nose featuring the flags of the lands the Swoose had visited.

Third, The Swoose as it appeared in 1945 after being overhauled and having its camouflage stripped, gleaming silver with the flag panel on the nose and the Swoose artwork preserved on a circle of OD camouflage paint.

If you look closely at the flag panel you may notice a lot of repetition. That's because most of "The lands the Swoose has visited," as the line above the flag panel reads, were colonies in those days and flew the flags of their colonial masters or variations on them, indicated on the panel by the name of each land under its flag. There were three Stars'n'Stripes (for Hawaii, the Philippines and Canton Island - oddly, not one for the USA), quite a few Red Ensigns of the UK with the Union Jack in the corner and a small graphic for the colony on the red field, several Dutch tricolors and a couple French ones. It wasn't until The Swoose flew south to work out of the Canal Zone and began to visit some of the independent nations of Latin America, plus Cuba and Haiti in the Caribbean that it started picking up some variety with the addition of unique flags of independent countries. Even then, in the Caribbean it found still more British and Dutch colonies.

I made the 1945 version of the flag panel pretty much authentic, but since the flag panel is so small on the textures and can't be seen in much detail in the sim, I just used a copy of it for the 1943 skin. In fact, the 1943 version really looked very much like the 1945 version, much more so than one might expect considering all the places The Swoose hadn't been to yet in 1943.

The skins will be uploaded soon, but I might not get a chance to package them up today.

EDIT:

I did get a chance. The sweese have flown, right up the pipe.
 
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These are great textures Mick! Thank you. Excellent art work. The Swoose logo and flags worked out with fine detail.
We're heading out from Batchelor Airfield up to Del Monte first thing tomorrow morning.

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Nice work Mick :encouragement: and thanks for the interesting read about the history of this aircraft.

Cheers,
Huub
 
Very nice paints, Mick. In the time it took you to do this package and the "Mary Ann" package I'd still be trying to get the "Swoose" logo right. :biggrin-new:
 
I just put up a small fix for the 1945 version. I'd neglected to remove the black de-icer boots from the stabilizers.

Just drop the new texture into the Swoose45 texture folder.

BTW, I didn't draw that Swoose artwork from scratch. I copied it from a photo and just cleaned it up, resized it and pasted it onto the texture file. I could never paint something like that from scratch!
 
Hurricane91 said:
These are great textures Mick! Thank you. Excellent art work. The Swoose logo and flags worked out with fine detail.
We're heading out from Batchelor Airfield up to Del Monte first thing tomorrow morning.
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Glad you like it. Don't forget, in its early days in Australia, when its camouflage was fresh and it was flying combat missions back to the Philippines, the Swoose was still a bomber. It wasn't until it was so beat up that it was retired from combat that General Brett hauled it out of the scrapyard and used it was a transport because nothing else was available.

I considered a skin depicting The Swoose as she appeared when still based i the Philippines when it still had its original pre-war natural metal finish, but in those days she had no name and no artwork, and not even any unit markings. So it seemed rather pointless to paint it that way. If anyone wants a skin to depict it at that time, just remove the tail number from Shessi's bare metal skin.
 
stoney said:
Wonderful Mick! I read somewhere that actress Swoosie Kurtz was named after this plane.
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That is correct Stoney. Swoosie Kurtz (b. 1944) was the only child of Margo and Col. Frank Kurtz. Col. Kurtz flew the Swoose extensively in the Southwest Pacific Area as General George Brett's
personal transport. Kurtz later commanded the 463d bombardment Group in Italy. His B-17G was named "The Swoose (1944 Model) It Flys?" A remarkable life story story by any standard.

http://lanbob.com/lanbob/H-42Auth/KF32P.htm
 
Very interesting!

A lot of pilots named their planes after their kids. This is the only time I've heard of where a pilot named his kid after his plane.
 
Right here, in the library.. 8th one down..

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/local_links.php?catid=205

 
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