Its been a couple of years since Corgi released their last B-17 “Flying Fortress” heavy bomber. Mind you they have several large bombers in their growing portfolio so they have to be careful where they place their eggs in the product basket. But with the recent airing of the mini series “Masters of the Air”, hype was building for a 1:72 scale model that could both live up to its name and entice more collectors into the hobby. So, when Corgi indicated that a new B-17 was in the works, one that had a storied history behind it, we were downright giddy and looking forward to taking orders for the holiday season.

That is until now. Last week, as part of their regular Diecast Diaries newsletter, preliminary images were shown for “Royal Flush”, a legendary B-17F that, as it turned out, was the only aircraft to survive a bombing mission over Munster in 1943. As a member of the “Bloody 100th” bomb group, so named for the number of aircraft lost on this single mission, “Royal Flush” somehow survived this strike, despite being set upon by countless Luftwaffe fighters intent upon destroying the entire bomb group. At the controls of “Royal Flush” was Lieutenant Robert “Rosie” Rosenthal, an accomplished pilot that somehow performed a number of defensive maneuvers so that they could return home to their base at Thorpe Abbot Field in England.

But now the model. As you can see, the replica has a huge gap that runs from its nose down the fuselage, with a tampo-printed insignia overlaying the forward part of the model. The gap is so large that it almost seems as if you can peer into the nose section to see inside. Now I can understand if this was Corgi’s first attempt at modelling the B-17, but folks this is at least their 15th look at bringing the B-17 to their collector base. How they managed to bungle the job and introduce such a large join line at this point in the model’s lineage is, quite frankly, baffling, especially since they pride themselves on offering professionally-built and heavily researched scale models to their Aviation Archives series.

I don’t often criticize a model for its accuracy, especially one that hasn’t been released as yet and represents a sizeable impact on Corgi’s overall revenue this holiday season. But with the Trump Administration’s hike in tariffs on product brought in from China, we thought it made sense to say something now since there may be some time to re-work the model so that the join lines aren’t so noticeable. “Royal Flush”? Well, you decide if the name has a dual meaning.