A6M2b Zero - Attack on Pearl Harbor - 1/32 Tamiya

[Alex]

8 hours ago, A6M said:

Hello Alex,

 

The build looks great, watching your work has got me back at my work table again after a four year hiatus (but that's another story).  I put together about the furthest possible  Zero from what would be posted on these pages - a 1/144th scale Sweet A6M2-N Rufe.

 

I'll keep watching to see how everything turns out.

 

Ryan

Ryan,

 

Great to see you back at the bench.  I hope you can share some photos of your Rufe in the non-LSP forum here.  Would really like to see those.  There is a conversion kit available that enables you to make a Rufe from a 1/32 Zero kit.  I have every intention of doing that with another instance of this Tamiya kit one day.

[chuck540z3]

Meticulous and super clean modeling.  I just love it!

 

Cheers,

Chuck

[Alex]

2 hours ago, chuck540z3 said:

Meticulous and super clean modeling.  I just love it!

 

Cheers,

Chuck

Coming from you that is high praise.  Thanks!

[Alex]

So I figured why wait.  I masked off the control surfaces as I did not want to add any more paint to them lest their "lighterness" disappear, and shot some more IJN Gray mix, this time with the small airbrush for more targeted control.  I am now much happier with the color density and the reduced prominence of the PLW emphasis on rivets/panel lines.

 

 

The engine/mount is just set in place for this shot; I've got quite a bit of work yet before it is installed permanently.

 

The tailplanes, with "fabric" control surfaces

 

 

Closer shot of engine and mount.

 

 

After spraying more of the main fuselage color I wound up with the inevitable grainy surface from spraying slowly with fast-drying paint.  So I did the lacquer "magic trick" and just filled the airbrush with Mr leveling Thinner and hosed the model down.  Voila - smooth.  BTW in the above shot it looks like the rivet detail is completely lost from the wing root, but that's an artifact of the angle and the crappy phone camera.  It's still there.

[Brett M]

Very nice.....I like the toned down look more. And of course, that engine.......

[Thunnus]

Beautiful work on your Zero, Alex!  I love the alternative approach to the recessed detail PLW and it looks like you are getting a great effect there.  I've always wondered on these light-colored Zeros... did visible paint chipping occur like it did with the green painted Japanese aircraft?

[Alex]

1 hour ago, Thunnus said:

Beautiful work on your Zero, Alex!  I love the alternative approach to the recessed detail PLW and it looks like you are getting a great effect there.  I've always wondered on these light-colored Zeros... did visible paint chipping occur like it did with the green painted Japanese aircraft?

With the caveat that there’s a ton of opinion out there on this (see for instance Aviation of Japan Blog), my amateur take on it is that it must have occurred to some degree.  I have definitely seen photos of early IJN zeros with visible bare metal on the front of the cowl, for instance, as you’d expect from prop-driven debris.  Two mitigating factors in the perception of lots of chipping may be that 1. It’s just harder to see in poor quality B&W photos against the light colored paint and 2. the Zeros built in ‘41 and ‘42 were factory primed and painted with a paint combo meant to survive operations at sea, in factories that were not yet pressed by shortages of materials or manpower.

 

it is my understanding that many later Japanese fighters (Tonys, Georges, Tojos, etc) were shipped from the factory in bare metal and painted in the field or at least upon receipt by the IJA. Plenty of photos show later IJA aircraft deliberately only partially painted with various patches and squiggles of dark green over bare aluminum.  This kind of thin finish had to and apparently did erode away quickly, leading to the spectacularly weathered look we see in some photos from the Pacific war.  Even if a plane was painted entirely green in the factory like (I believe) a late Zero would have been, I’m willing to bet that the pressures of war by late ‘43 to ‘44 meant that corners were cut and paint durability was far from the top of anyone’s list.

 

My $0.02.  Very interested to hear others’ thoughts.  I’m definitely doing a severely weathered Oscar or Tojo in the near future...

[Alex]

And thinking further on that question, by the '43 / '44 (A6M5 / "Green Zero") epoch, most IJN fighters were operating from land bases like Rabaul, Buin, Truk, etc, not from the depleted and fuel-starved carrier fleet.  So taking off and landing on dirt runways, pilots and crew climbing on them with muddy boots, etc.  Lots more opportunity for paint wear and tear than on a nice clean aircraft carrier.

[turbo]

I'd agree with that summation Alex. On some of the A6M2 wrecks you can clearly see red oxide primer so I would say they were well painted and cared for early in the war. I also read on one of the sites that early in the war Japanese paint was considered very good quality. Carrier-borne aircraft would have also been kept out out of the elements in the below deck hangars. As you say, from what I can gather as resources became scarce later in the war after the shift to the green/grey camo scheme, many aircraft were painted unprimed and probably received minimal maintenance operating from the harsh conditions of Pacific land bases, resulting in the worn appearance of some of those aircraft.

 

My late-war A6M5 is going to be a bit beat up...

[Basta]

13 hours ago, Alex said:

And thinking further on that question, by the '43 / '44 (A6M5 / "Green Zero") epoch, most IJN fighters were operating from land bases like Rabaul, Buin, Truk, etc, not from the depleted and fuel-starved carrier fleet.  So taking off and landing on dirt runways, pilots and crew climbing on them with muddy boots, etc.  Lots more opportunity for paint wear and tear than on a nice clean aircraft carrier.

I've been following your build with great interest and you're doing great work on the kit.

 

I've been meaning to ask you about exactly this for a while now; I have this kit and like the lines of the early zeros better than the A6M5 but the early pistachio scheme just doesn't do it for me. So I've been thinking of doing mine as a land-based unit from this period, worn and with field-applied dark green, something random and distinctive akin to this well-known photo of Nishizawa's A6M3. 

So my question is if you have come across any good photos of these veteran land units in your research that could be of help. There's very little online out there. Many thanks in advance. 

[John1]

Fantastic work, i'm really enjoying this thread (and learning a lot about the real thing).  I feel the same way as Basta above.  I really like the field applied green camo, however, i was under the impression that this wasn't applicable to the A6M2b version.  Am I mistaken and if so, any decals out there for a camo'd Zero?  I'd love to give this a go.

 

Sorry for the thread diversion....

[A6M]

Hello Gentlemen,

 

I’ll try to answer a number of questions here.

 

The 1/32^nd scale A6M2-N conversion made by MDC looks like it should give a good start on a Rufe, but looking at the build done here at LSP by Rick K I see a lot of little details that could be added. If you want to ever do the conversion I’ll write up what all needs to be done.

 

Regarding chipped paint on the Zero, remember that it was spec’d out as a carrier plane. Because of this the attention to reducing corrosion was paramount which meant all paint application was done over a red-oxide primer. IJN aircraft such as the George or Betty were not designed to be carrier-borne and so different paint standards were applied.

 

As Alex stated, Zeros based on land would suffer more paint chipping from ground debris, but this should still not be overdone. I suspect that in the last year of the war production standards slipped and the quality of the Zero’s paint did drop, but up until then keep chipping to a minimum.

 

What the paint did do was fade as the surface of the original olive-gray paint oxidized and turned light gray. I believe it was the examination of such derelict derelict aircraft, both during the war and later, that gave rise to the myth of the light whitish-gray Zero.

 

A Zero out in the field for a while thus would have its upper surfaces somewhat faded to gray, but this oxidized layer could be rubbed off in areas that were commonly contacted, exposing the somewhat darker original paint colour. Several photos show this happening on the side of fuselage and the wing root below the cockpit. Here contact from the pilot and/or ground crew wore away the oxidized paint. Further wear would then expose the underlying red primer and then eventually the bare aluminum. But given the combat attrition rate of the IJN I suspect this end process was not all that common.

 

Last of all, the A6M2 indeed could be found in the field applied dark green camo scheme. The use of such upper-surface camo began in the Solomons, possibly as early as January 1943 but by the beginning of April 1943 it was quite widespread. Then in early April both Mitsubishi and Nakajima adopted the use of factory applied dark-green camo to the Zeros coming off of the production line.  Keep in mind are that most field-camoed A6M2s would have been built by Nakajima, as Mitsubishi stopped production of the M2 in June 1942. From the end of August all new Nakajima-built A6M2s would have had the the yellow wing leading edge IFF markings and the white surround to the fuselage hinomaru, although the latter was often more-or-less obscured by any field applied camo.

 

At the risk of hijacking this tread I’ll post three possible A6M2 field-applied camo schemes. I don't think any decals for these markings are available, but they still should not be to difficult to replicate.

 

Ryan

 

[Alex]

Ryan to the rescue again!  So I think the answer is that if you want a field-painted dark green A6M2 Zero, it should be a Nakajima-built machine, probably shipped down from Truk or detached from a carrier air wing and stationed at Rabaul, making the long flight down the slot every day covering the Bettys that were attempting to bomb the Marines off of Henderson Field.  And as the dark green wears off it should probably be exposing sun-faded IJN Gray, not bare aluminum.  If I wanted to build that plane I’d pair it with a Marine Wildcat (also seriously weathered) of the Cactus Air Force.  Maybe that’s my Guadalcanal vignette.

 

of course it would also work with the Rufe, since “Washing Machine Charlie” was a nightly visitor to Henderson...

[A6M]

Here are several field-camoed Nakajima built A6M2s

 

T2 / 1163 was found at Vila on Kolombangara Island in the New Georgia Islands. The T2 tail code prefix identifies this Zero as belong to the 204 Kokutai and circumstantial evidence points to 1163 having the c/n of 5452, thus being manufactured in about the last week of November 1943. The plane had its original olive-gray camo over-painted with a darker green field-applied camo. The original tail code then appears to have been over-painted in a somewhat different shade of green and replaced with the new white T2 / 1163 code. A similar procedure seems to have been done on a wide fuselage band which was then replaced with a narrower yellow (?) band.

 

The positioning of the over-painted first tail code and the use of a wide fuselage band points to the plane first having been assigned to the 252 Kokutai. When this unit was moved out of the Solomons in March 1943 some of its Zeros were transferred over to the 204 Kokutai. Note that in addition to the new tail code and narrower fuselage band the wing hinomaru was also given a narrow white surrounding edge, a practice common on 204 Kokutai field-camoed Zeros. What is also interesting are the very wide IFF markings, extending back onto the landing gear covers.

 

[A6M]

W1-151 from the 201 Kokutai turns up in an image taken from a short film clip shot on Ballale Island and then again photographed at nearby Buin. The 201 Ku transferred into the Solomons in June 1943. At that time the 26^th Koku Sentai started to use a system of numeric tail code identification prefixes of which 1, 2, and 6 are seen in images alongside the W1 prefix of the 201 Ku. When the 201 Ku officially became part of the 26^th Koku Sentai in July 1943 it too adopted these numeric tail code identifiers.

 

Thus the images of W1-151 can be dated to June/early July 1943. The tail code appears to be painted in yellow and the fuselage band is probably the same colour. W1-151 would of course also have had the yellow wing IFF markings while the white surround on the fuselage hinomaru looks to be over-painted by the field-applied dark green camo.