Started this one for myself many years ago (Eight? Nine?) when the notion of a 1/144th personal collection bit hard. Got to have a B-17 in there, right? Then as now, the only choice is the very old Crown kit (now in a Minicraft box, I think.) It's not one of Crown's better efforts, so sad to say.

The original plan was for her to be in-flight, of course. The cowlings come with crudely open flaps that would not do at all, so I smoothed one out, put a prop hub on it and made a mold to cast a quartet. The raised flight deck on the fuselage is asymmetric, so I built up some missing fuselage with epoxy putty. Same story with the nose, though I decided I didn't want to do a G.

I've got a client who's become a fan of this small scale and he sent me a nice decal sheet with markings for My Devotion (an F) so "my" B-17 has been transferred to the buyer's pile. Mostly that means she'll be sitting on wheels and showing prop blades. Those prop blades will be from Minicraft DC-3s as those in the B-17 are oddly shaped.
Love holding this one at arm's length and tilting it this way and that. What amazing lines that airplane had.
No one asks me, but one of the "kits I'd like to see" on the top of my list is an accurate and easy to build 1/144th B-17. What are the odds? Instead we get another one in 1/72nd (Revell Germany) that hasn't impressed me with its die-cast look and full interior. *Yawn* That's alright. One more I can avoid and save my allowance for something more appealing.
Or may this be the better starting point? http://www.flyingmule.com/products/DM-51007
A $30 plus shipping starting point. Hmmmm. It's just not fair.
Here's what you get if you just glue the Crown pieces together. What an insult to a classic machine.
(Of course another on my wish list was an accurate and easy to build 1/144th C-130. Somewhere on this blog you can see my experience with Minicraft's effort which should have been the answer to my prayer. Gotta say, if I do another 1/144th C-130, I'd want to use the ancient Revell offering as the starting point.)