Well-known Matsuo Hagiri's Mitsubishi A5M4 W-102 reconstruction seems to be fiction

[Snorry]

I've made some simple research and find that reconstruction like that:

or that, most modern:

are based on wrong information. The main source of them was this photograph:

but it gives no ideas how the tail part of aircraft was looked like. Nevertheless, it seems some ideas were taken out of it - I mean out of images of two other airplanes on this photo, seen under the wing of Hagiri's aircraft:

Both of them have wide black stripes aft of Hinomaru, and at least that on the right also has slanted stripe on the tail. So, those markings are specific to some squadron.

The problem is that this Hagiri's plane is known as part of IJNS Soryu air group, but no Japanese carrier air group is known to have such markings. Soryu's aircraft in particular  in the late part of 1930s were marked by ether red or white (with red borders) single thin band - or they had no bands at all.  At the same time markings of this Hagiri's plane closely resemble this:

This is aircraft from Yokosuka kokutai, possibly from famous Genda's Circus (was this the reason of such flamboyant paint job?).  Matsuo Hagiri spent most of his flying career with Yokosuka kokutai, Genda's Circus included, so it is almost certain that on photo in question he depicted on one of Yokosuka kokutai machines he flew after returning from China and before he was given new Zero.

As of aircraft Hagiri flew off Soryu there is series of photos of Japanese naval pilots posing before different A5M4s onboard Soryu. After close examination of them I've found this:

The rightmost fragment is part of the photo with Hagiri above, other three - from those taken onboard Soryu. There is no doubts that the man on all four is Matsuo "Mustashio" Hagiri, and on one of those photos, here

he (in the middle) is seen sitting in front of A5M4 W-102, which was his mount during this cruise and had usual Soryu's air group markings of the time. So, well-known and widely published (decals included) reconstruction of Hagiri's aircraft seems to be the mix of Yokosuka and Soryu kokutais markings and is incorrect. I would advice those who seeks at least a bit of historical accuracy when building Fujimi or new Wingsy kits A5M4 to choose other variants of markings. A bit more on my research is here: http://snorska.livejournal.com/212238.html  (in Russian, but with English abstract). Any comments are highly welcome. Thank you.

Edited January 17, 2017 by Snorry

[Bpasenelli]

One of the scary things about modeling IJN aircraft is the constantly changing consensus on colors. I imagine myself putting the work required on the wingsy kit and finding the color is all wrong.