Academy – 1603 – B-377 Clipper Nightingale Stratocruiser

Description:

Unassembled plastic model kit in 1/72 scale of a U.S. airliner Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, derived from the military transport C-97 Stratofreighter. Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) was the first and main operator of the type, receiving the first B-377s in 1949. The 377 was one of the most advanced and capable of the propeller-driven transports, and among the most luxurious, but it had severe reliability issues and high maintenance costs. They were totally retired in 1963.

Academy released this kit in 1999, one year before release the C-97 and KC-97s kits, following an inverse way in the release to the real aircrafts.

Kit include decal sheet with one prototype marking and one Pan Am marking, the “Clipper Nightingale”, in fact the markings are for the same aircraft, the Boeing prototype was refitted and delivered to Pan Am where it got the name of the “Clipper Nightingale”, a nickname that Pan Am used later for other types.

As happens with all the series, Academy never reissued this kits, of course they are not perfect kits, common complains are about the engines detail, probably this passenger variant is the one which gets more criticism, but in our opinion they are good enough kits as we see re-releases of worse kits almost every month, so that’s not a reason for. In 2023 Wolfpack Design announced a reissue of this kit, but as per 2024 that doesn’t happened yet.