The North American Aviation B-45 was one of America’s first operational bombers with jet propulsion. Designed as NA-130 during 1944 and 1945, the Tornado had a straight unswept wing and 4 jet engines in 2 wing nacelles. First flight was February 1947 and it became the first jet bomber in service with the U.S. Air Force. It was the first four-jet aircraft to drop an atom bomb at a test and the first to be refueled in mid air. Other versions were the longer range B-45C with wingtip tanks and the photoreconnaissance version, the RB-45C which was also flown a brief period out of the U.K. on secret missions in RAF markings.
About 143 aircraft were manufactured and the B-45 was also used during the Korean War.
B-45A Tornado
This B-45A s/n 47-0008. It is on display at the Castle Air museum, Atwater, Ca.(USA)
Photographed November 2017 by Cees Hendriks , (c) copyright IPMS Nederland
A few plastic kits were released over the years. Old kits were FROG in 1/159 with a few vacuforms in 1/72 of Contrail and AeroForm. MACH2 had a short run 1/72 kit but in 2017 Valom released better kits in several versions of the B-45 in 1/72 scale.
This walk around page was first created January 2018 by M. de Vreeze