LS 1/72 Ki-15-1 Babs

[Garry c]

My first work in progress so you can see why I hardly ever finish a model. The model is the Mitsubishi Ki-15-1 army recon plane from 1937. The model 1 has a 9 cylinder engine with ring type engine cowling and no cowl flaps.

It is an old kit but the detail is very nice .

The interior is bare so I decided to add some detail:

Framing is first

Nick Millman's blog tells us that the army's Mitsubishi Ki-21 Sally bomber had a blue interior. The Mitsubishi navy planes used green but I figured that the Army would insist on their own colour.

The floors were next

The doubled frame lines up with the main wing spar.

The observer's floor with compass and the fuel tanks between the pilot and observer.

The blue is Valleo 70.925 intense blue.

I have only found three interior pics and the drawings from the Flight magazine. These are all from the record breaking flight of the Kamikaze in 1937. The army aircraft probably did not have the fuel tanks in the center as there is very little space for extra radios, RDF equipment, cameras and the like.

Observers floor with compass, seat not finished

Fuel tanks rear

all for now.

Garry c

[Stew Dapple]

Nice start Garry, and nice detailing on the interior too

Cheers,

Stew

[Garry c]

Thanks for the reply, I started this kit a few weeks ago so these next posts did not happen overnight.

Next was the observers instrument panel on the left side

The fuel tanks were made of 4 pieces of 1.0mm thick sheet styrene glued together an shaped with files and sanding sticks . They looked to narrow so they were split in the middle and two 1.0 mm. spacers were added

Two strips were added to the pilots' floor to mount the tanks

test fit

On the right side,

the shelf above the radio was added, a short piece of 1.1mm.rod was glued into hole drilled in the side to make the meter.

Test fit with tanks

Thanks for looking.

Garry c

[Martian]

An interesting subject and I look forward to following your proress.

Martin

[TheBaron]

Purposeful work Garry

[Nick Millman]

Sorry to come late to your build but the best Vallejo colours to use for the Army interior colour are 816 'Luftwaffe Uniform WWII' or 964 'Field Blue'. The latter is a little lighter than the real colour but ok for small scale cockpits.

You have done a really nice job on the interior details and the LS kit is a little gem.

Regards

Nick

[Milo Burgh]

The navy version, the C5M, did it use the same colour?

[Nick Millman]

The navy version, the C5M, did it use the same colour?

Unfortunately none of the colours are definitive because it has been argued that Mitsubishi applied its IJN "house colours" to the Ki-15. However the Ki-46-II had the dark blue-grey interior as required by Army specs.

IJN requirements for the cockpit interior were M3, Hairyokushoku (ash green colour) - an eau-de-nil/sage green colour approximately similar to FS 34272 but a little lighter and more yellowish. Varied quite a bit in practice though.

Nick

[Milo Burgh]

Many thanks Nick.

Emilio.

[Garry c]

Thanks for the interest and kind comments.

Nick, you have not come late, for me this is early.

I have purchased Valleo field blue but these pictures are from Sunday,the next post will be field blue.

Next is the radio, four layers of 0.40 in(1.1 mm) styrene 5.0 mm by 4.5mm with strips and rounds to be made into knobs

The bracket for the radio,the "ears" look like vibration mounts.

Test fit

Photo of navigator's cockpit looking foward

Looking at pictures of Japanese aircraft radios on the web, this seems to be the Transmitter, The Receiver is to the rear.

Transmitter trimmed and painted

A little rough but I can barely see what I am doing!

Compared to the drawings, the shelf is too low and the Transmitter is slightly over-scale but you get the idea.

Starting to get a little crowded in there.

I am very carefully building the interior for the Kamikaze which is almost certainly wrong for the Army version.

Good Times.

More later,

Garry c

[Garry c]

A little progress this week:

First painted cockpit with Vallejo 924 Field Blue

The colour looks very different than the colour chips on the monitor, thanks for all your research,Nick.

On the web ,there is a picture of the second cockpit looking forward,

You can see that the radio sits forward of the rear two windows in the fuselage,my radio covered one third of the windows. If the radio is moved forward, the shelf above disappears.

It appears that the opening for the second cockpit is too far back,it should come up to the frame located between the front and rear cockpit windows.

About this much.

Radio shelf mounted,the brace was shortened to bring the meter closer to the opening

The radio in the drawing from Flight magazine looks taller than it is wide,the one in the picture is the opposite. I was not happy with the one I made , so I filliped it over, turned it sideways and made a new face.

I think this one does not block the windows.

But, it is still a little wide.

That is as far as I got. Outta town next couple of weekends so I probably will not get much done.

Thanks for looking,

Garry c

[Nick Millman]

Very nice. I like what you've done with that radio - brilliant!

Nick

[Garry c]

Thanks Nick. I try to reproduce what I see as it helps me understand what's going on in the picture. It helps me understand and appreciate the designers an the choices they made and what the flyers had to work with.

There is one thing I have not seen in any pictures of the Kamikaze... drum roll please...Parachutes!!

Garry c