Bonjour,

I mentioned it in  my short  presentation on the "Hasegawa 1/32 Mitsubishi Raiden J2M-3" posted in ARC a few weeks ago, I am currently finishing on completing at the same scale the "Mitsubishi Japanese Navy WWII Airplanes" at this scale.

My "Tamiya A6M-5 Zero" is nearly finished (still a bit of weathering to do) and I have already completed building the "Special Hobby A5M" that I am presenting in this article.

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Of course, despite some very nice engraved details, it is surely not playing in the same "Tamigawa" category for getting a correct and well aligned parts assembling.  From there, main problem has been to get a correct continuity between the fuselage and the wings for both the upper and lower levels where I had to use heavy quantities of putty, followed by a re-engraving of panel lines lost in the filling and erasing processes.  Second issue was to obtain a correct dihedron: I had to cut at the fuselage junction of both extrados about 2 mm of plastic in order to prevent the wings to get a "Stuka shape".

Otherwise, nothing really specific: adding plugs cables on the engine, thinning the trailing edges, cutting away the elevator control surfaces to stick them in a more dynamic position than a "basic neutral one"...

As for the deco and markings, I wanted to do something more original than the usual overall grey with black cowling and red tail for the squadrons operating in China in the late 30's.  I did a bit of web research to eventually find a nice camo, using some unusual colors such as a bright green and a sandy brown.

I could not resist going for it and here is the result.

Final touch: I also could not resist to add a small Japanese rising sun flag attached to the antenna mast as I saw this particular plane carried "this tiny patriotic touch" for some time (I think it was used to designate the leading squadron plane).

I used a very thin lead sheet that I shaped to get a flag "floating in the wind" and that I delicately painted with the red "radiating hinomaru".

To finish, a bit of aging and weathering and here is the first Mitsubishi IJN fighter of WWII ready to fly!

Hope you'll enjoy...

Olivier Barles

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