1/72 Tachikawa Ki-94-II, RS models

[atvd1020]

More for propaganda than anything else, from 1943 onwards the IJAAF began to recruit and train pilots from puppet states of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere whose armed forces were too small to have their own air forces, and post them to newly-created Chutai nominally attached to existing Sentai. The model below depicts one such aircraft of the 1st Sentai, 4th Chutai, a Ki-94-II found abandonded at Tavoy airfield during Operation Extended Capital in February 1946.

The aircraft above is believed to be the mount of Hari Jamsedji Ramsingh, heir to the princely state of Bhanipur. Disowned and sentenced to death in absentia by his father the Nawab, it is believed he lived out the rest of his life in exile in Thailand.

This aircraft is big, nearly the size of a Dinah. It is the 'Home Defence' boxing of RS Models kit, built as a 'production model' because I found the six-bladed propeller sexy. In spite of some of really vague instructions at time, the build was straightforward though with the usual puttying and filling at the wheel wells and wing-to-fuselage join. The canopy is too narrow and cracked overnight after I glued it in place, and given that it's discontinued I doubt I can get a replacement. The propeller was a pain to clean up and I broke one of the bladed in doing so. The photoetch was a pain to assemble and most of it is invisible anyway.

I decided to base the colour scheme on that of the Ki-106 also released by RS models. The model was first painted Humbrol 11 overall and then I masked different panels and control surfaces to paint them with different shades of IJA grey-green. These include the WEM paint out of the bottle (and then blued 4:5 with RAAF Sky Blue), Gunze Sangyo IJA grey-green and mixtures of Humbrol 165, 23 and 90 whose ratios sound like the 'Spam' sketch. The predominant one is 2 parts 90 to 1 part 165, though. Some mixtures showed up yellowish on photographing them before and after gloss varnishing them. Part of the yellowing also is gloss varnish I allowed to pool by mistake.

The propeller is painted with Tamiya IJA green and the anti-glare strip with Gunze IJA green. The propeller tips and identification bands were a 4:1 mixture of Humbrol 24 and 60. The sentai markings (which I picked because they were easy to paint; I doubt the 1st Sentai would be in Burma at the end of the war) were Humbrol 105 and a slightly more orange mixture than the one mentioned above, to match the Azad Hind government's flag. The tiger on the tail came from a Sea Hawk decal sheet.

The weathering is a bit exaggerated but I was having too much with it to bother at the time, and I hope it distracts from the canopy. The last two photos were taken under different lighting conditions to show how perversely the paint can change colour.

Thanks for looking! Comments are welcome.

[jimbuna]

Nice one.

[JOCKNEY]

Great to see a different aircraft and some history undertaken to explain the build congratulations