Skyraider3D

Sorry for the late reply. I started a new job and have neglected the internet a bit I actually have made a detailed 3D model of this cowling, and I have a 3D printer, but I see you got it nicely fixed up already! Looking really good and I admire your going the extra mile with this. Great stuff!

Beautiful work David! Really nice! One nitpick though: Japanese aircraft typically had blue starboard wing light covers. Other than that, she's looking real sharp

Really cool work! The cockpit looks excellent. But I need to warn you about your cowling conversion. The carburettor intake of the A6M3 was placed 50 mm higher than that of the A6M5. As a result it also cut into the top skin of the cowling and in the topview this looks like a little slot. Please see illustrations below. Drawing: Kenji Miyazaki (NB. Of no relevance here, but the often quoted 360 mm width for the A6M5 carburettor intake should be 380 mm!) 3D render: yours truly Additionally it's worth noting that the A6M5 cowling upper lip has a panel line down the middle, which isn't present on the A6M3. Lastly the A6M5 has additional rivets that curve with the carburettor intake duct. The A6M3 intake duct is straight and it doesn't have these rivets. I've made a sketch below to show what needs to be modified:

Great progress!!

It's a bit more than a tiny triangle, but it was indeed painted black! Here is the same thing on a Ki-43. I hope this clarifies things and confirms it's hopefully worth adding. NB. On the Ki-44 the triangle is usually standing proud, so I think it was connected to the middle or upper of the three holes.

In many pictures it's not visible, so it's an aluminium hatch for sure and not a viewport. I think it may have been used for sighting the guns (adjusting converging and elevation), rather than actual maintenance.

Beautiful engine!!

That cowling looks stunning! Really, really nice. Now on the topic of trim tab actuators... every single kit of the Ki-44 has omitted the elevator trim tab actuator, as has just about every drawing. But the Ki-44 definitely had them, so they will need to be scratch built. Turns out it's just about impossible to find a decent picture of one. I've compiled a few of the least-unclear pics I could find. Best look at Ki-43s to get the idea, as that one has a pretty similar setup.

That looks really cool! I've been working on some watery stuff as well and it's good fun. I've read that Mod Podge yellows over time, so perhaps worth adding a UV clear coat if it goes anywhere near sunlight?

Painful! But it does look very good.

Excellent! You're probably one of the very first modellers to do so too

Alain, the chutes could indeed be opened up, or simply fill in with black paint, seeing as it's on the undersides anyway. Few pics show the undersides of the Ki-61-I Hei well, but this is one that does and it happens to be of #88 in its spring 1945 camouflage pattern! Like many 244th Sentai machines, it was camouflaged in the summer of 1944, stripped in the winter and re-camouflaged in the spring of '45. The droptanks are Yellow-Green #7, by the way. The best match for this is AK RC330. Leading edges in typical orange-yellow and the 88 on the wheeldoor is red with white piping. Now about that venturi of #88, after some digging I must conclude that two types of venturi tubes were tested on it. One type is this small tube (5" long), which is generally used as a pilot relief tube(!) and mounted in reverse! (Note the cowling stencils, one of the few stencils that remained as all others were wiped off with the winter camouflage removal.) Here is a modern day application as a relief tube. The more common 10" venturi was also tested on #88 as evident from this shot. I'm trying to find out which one was the latter application, but I put my money on this one seeing as other 244th Sentai machines have it too, and it has a better performance:

Yes you're most likely right there! I had a similar experience with masking over wood pattern textures. Despite a double matt coat and using low-tack masking tape, parts still came off.

Great choice Dave! Looks like a good start

Ooo I like that!

You're welcome, glad to be of help! It's looking very good so far. Yes definitely go for that bird, it looks awesome. The seatbelts are indeed a confusing topic with Japanese fighters. It seems that the Ki-44 didn't have shoulder belts, and the manual only shows the lap belts. I think shoulder belt might've made the use of the telescopic gunsight a bit problematic, as the pilot needed to lean forward for this. Additionally the Ki-44 was the only(!) Japanese fighter not designed for dogfighting. It was a pure interceptor, designed for speed and firepower, which was a concept Japanese pilots weren't terribly familiar with. As a result the Ki-44 wasn't too popular with many pilots, who preferred the more manoeuvrable Ki-43. With the Ki-84 Nakajima managed to combine the best of both.

Alain, if you need any help on your build and want to get it accurate, please let me know and I am happy to help. I've spent (wasted? ) 100s of hours of my life researching Ki-61s when illustrating the Osprey book on Ki-61 and Ki-100 Aces by Nicholas Millman. Most profile art of Ki-61s out there is inaccurate and this applies to the samples above as well as to most scale model kit instructions and decals sheets. I myself made a number of mistakes with the Osprey art (deadline pressure). The identifying feature of the Ki-61 Hei (which was a short-nose model) is of course the 20 Mauser cannon, which makes it easy to recognise in pictures. On the wing and a small circular inspection hatch will need to be scribed in as this is missed in all artwork and drawings: The standard interior colour for the Ki-61-I Hei is grey-green (not RLM 79 Sandgelb or anything like that), although some early production models may have had blue-grey or even a mix of both. AK RC328 is a good match for the grey-green and MRP 417 for the blue-grey. Please note that all Ki-61-I Heis were delivered in bare metal, so any camouflage will be field applied and most likely dark green. From memory I can't think of any Ki-61-I Heis with solid camouflage, but it's quite likely they did exist but I'll need to check my references. About the venturi tube, only a select few aircraft of leading pilots of the 244th Sentai were equipped with this. Indeed Kobayashi's #295 and Kuroe's #88 had them (although the latter had it removed together with the field camo in the winter of 1944/45). It's said they were installed for use with an experimental gyro gunsight, but I've found no evidence of the latter and a standard Type 100 Army reflector sight appears to be installed in both. The venturi itself is a license-built copy of the USAAC AN5807-1 (Type B-4A), which was also produced by Sperry amongst others. An accurate 3D-printed resin version of this was recently released by Luminaero (product U003x032). About the shamrock-adorned Tony... it's a bit of a red herring (as well as a Ki-61-I Tei if it even existed at all), so best leave well alone. The 56th Sentai machine you pointed at in the profiles is also invalid. It was also a Ki-61-I Tei and the number was 751 (Osprey profile 28). Kuroe's #88 is definitely one of the more exiting valid schemes and I also have photos of it with camouflage. Remember that if showing it without camo (winter 1944/45), the ailerons will still have the summer 1944 field camo as these fabric-covered items could not be paint-stripped like the metal skin. You can clearly see their dark appearance in the photos you posted.

For early Ki-44s use blue-grey for the cockpit colour, for example https://mrpaint.sk/Japan?product_id=737 Also see: http://www.aviationofjapan.com/2009/08/useful-colours-army-interiors-part-one.html For later ones (>1943, so typically Ki-44-II Hei only) use yellow-green, for example https://ak-interactive.com/product/ija-29-ki-midori-iro-yellow-green-air/ Also see: http://www.aviationofjapan.com/2009/11/useful-colours-army-interiors-part-two.html Cockpit photos of Ki-44-II Otsu aircraft found in the Philippines in 1944 look rather dark, so I'd go for the blue-grey paint. The cockpit doors tended to rub down to bare metal from use by the maintenance guys (pilots apparently didn't use them much). You can see a good example of this, here: https://nimh-beeldbank.defensie.nl/foto-s/detail/2a3c51fb-9151-87fc-f367-ea3e5d235bd3/media/217172b2-ee78-f33d-4dff-91124d513a76 Note the very dark interior colour, yet the door is bare metal and almost no paint remains. This is in fact a Ki-44-II Otsu (recognisable by the larger cowl gun vent hole in combination with the telescopic sight) flown by the 87th Sentai, and possibly one of the machines that flew from Burma in 1943 so it's a very relevant reference to your subject. Note how the tail insignia was crudely masked for the field camouflage. All anti-glare areas were indigo black (anti-glare panel on the nose, instrument panel cover, rear fuselage skin underneath the canopy and the inside canopy framing). NB. An unrestored wing centre section in China is all what remains of the Ki-44. It shows traces of a greenish aotake in the wheel bays. PS. Here is a better copy of that NHK clip, by the way. I am not sure if it's AI enhanced or originates from a better source, but it sure shows a lot more detail: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/video/prior-to-rainstorms-mechanics-repair-planes-as-pilots-eat-news-footage/505935283?phrase=1944+nhk+burma You can clearly see the Ho-103 guns inside the cannon fairings now.

Dang you're quick! The NMF definitely looks good.

Ah you're doing the aircraft of 1st Lt. Mitsuo Oyake. Brilliant choice! I love the tail markings. Attached my profile from the Osprey book by Nick Millman. Looking excellent so far. Loving the metal! Small note: the cover around the exhausts is the same blue-black paint as used for the anti-glare panel. The red tail is a bit different too, as is the 18th Sentai marking, but you already mentioned it was gonna be a loose interpretation so I won't labour the point.

Super nice!!

Yes definitely do! I'd just go with the scheme as it is. I'm not sure if they removed the cannon before or after they applied the field camo. It's amazingly hard to find good references of these cannon-armed Tojos. If you want to look for other camouflaged machines, the 85th and 246th Sentais are your best bets. I'm sure the 9th Sentai had some cannon birds too (as did most Tojo units), but decent photos are very hard to find.

Nice going! Are you doing Kobayashi's aircraft Ki-61-I Hei c/n 3295? If so, don't forget to add white borders to the fuselage Hinomaru. Almost all kits get this wrong. The painting of this airplane went through several stages and it would be cool to recreate it like this for extra realism. The correct order is: 1 - NMF will full markings and stencils from factory; 2 - White border to the fuselage hinomaru only, red fuselage band, cobalt blue length-wise fuselage stripe painted at the unit (244th Sentai), together with the "Z" tail insignia in red; 3 - Camouflage pattern was added, which partly obscured the borders of the white border of the fuselage Hinomaru (and the reason it's almost always overlooked) and also covering some of the blue stripe. Note how the red fuselage band was masked to protect it from overspray, but the blue stripe was not. A photo of this can be found on page 62 of the old Famous Airplanes of the World book on the Ki-61; 4 - A white lengthwise fuselage stripe was added when the machine was handed to Kobayashi. Additional masking of the fuselage Hinomaru caused the curious artefact on the right of the "meatball" where the camouflage remained present. 5 - The tail section was painted red. I've tried to illustrate this plane below as it looked in January 1945 (for Nicholas Millman's Ki-61/100 Aces Osprey book). This machine was extensively photographed and most of these photos can be found online, but I can provide photos if necessary. Note that this plane had a few characteristics unique to the 244th Sentai: three aerial wires, an extra navigation light on the spine, removal of the oxygen filler cap (above the fuselage hatch). PS. One more point of attention: to my knowledge all kits of the Ki-61-I Hei forget a circular inspection hatch, which was unique to the cannon-armed Ki-61-I Hei. It can be seen quite clearly on this wing of a Ki-61 wreck found post-war.

Really nice work on those 40 mm wing cannon! I like your idea to backdate the kit to a Ki-44-II Otsu, however I must warn you: the machines you show in the NHK clip are from the 87th Sentai, which was sent to Burma for a brief period in 1943. The cannon were found to be unsatisfactory and were removed from the aircraft and a second pair of 12.7 mm machine guns installed in their place. The cannon's base housing remained however. I have illustrated one of these machines, which was camouflaged in the field with a broom(!), for Nicholas Millman's Osprey book on Ki-44 aces, as shown below. You can see the remnants of the 40 mm Ho-401 installation, but inside the cylindrical base was another Ho-103 12.7 mm machine gun. Please note that the droptanks of the Ki-44 were blue-grey (and from about 1944 Yellow-Green #7 just like the main late-war JAAF camouflage paint), but never yellow as so often shown.

Thanks! I've actually been a member since 2007 already (!!!) but have rarely posted so far I only picked up modelling last year again after a 23-year hiatus and my main scale is 1/48, but I do have a few 1/32 kits in the stash as well.