Ki61 Hien Kawasaki green paint match

[Tedfellows]

Hi guys,

I'm looking for a paint match for the green mottle pattern that's featured on the Hasegawa Kien. It recommends the Mr color 130 (not available in UK) on the instructions but cannot find an alternative green. any japanese experts out there that can help?

Thanks in advance :-)

Adam

[JOAN]

Adam,

some ref here :

http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/colorcharts/stuff_eng_colorcharts_japan.htm

A good match should be the FS34092 :

http://www.colorserver.net/showcolor.asp?fs=34094

so Humbrol HU149 is a good ref.

With Tamiya it is the Tamiya “Japanese Army Green” XF13.

Hope this will help.

cheers

olivier

[Seawinder]

Adam,

some ref here :

http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/colorcharts/stuff_eng_colorcharts_japan.htm

A good match should be the FS34092 :

http://www.colorserver.net/showcolor.asp?fs=34094

so Humbrol HU149 is a good ref.

With Tamiya it is the Tamiya “Japanese Army Green” XF13.

Hope this will help.

cheers

olivier

Olivier, did you perhaps mean to say 34094, rather than 34092? I would have said that 34092 has got too much of a blue tinge and that the target color is more towards an olive green.

[JOAN]

Olivier, did you perhaps mean to say 34094, rather than 34092? I would have said that 34092 has got too much of a blue tinge and that the target color is more towards an olive green.

...I am afraid you can say everything with a photo, even in colour.

Well I am not an expert ( in all..) but the 34094/092 is certainly a good match and this is the one commonly accepted ( R. Mikesh and Monogram books..). Japanese had of course no Federal Standard in their colour reference so....

One of the best book about KI-61 is - to me - about the 244 th Sentai with several "hand" coloured photos :

also here :

and of course different from a kodachrome :

Don't know the correct balance/hue and telling what is correct is a non-sense, but a dark not too yellow could be fine...a personnal approach !

some other info about 244 here : http://arawasi-wildeagles.blogspot.fr/2012_01_01_archive.html

olivier

Edited April 28, 2014 by JOAN

[Nick Millman]

The mottle was not applied by Kawasaki but by Army depots or receiving units. The concept of a "Kawasaki" green got conflated with the late-war factory applied olive brown colour back in the 1980s and has never gone away.

The Army colour standards for the two most common dark greens in use were:-

# 21 'green colour' - a fairly rich, slightly olive green approximate to RAL 6020 Chrome Green. Revel 363 and Humbrol 195 are both ok-ish with a preference for the former over the latter but the Revell is slightly too olive and the Humbrol not quite olive enough! Approximations of this colour appear in some paint ranges (e.g. WEM) as "Nakajima" Army green.

# 27 'blue green colour' - a slightly bluish, deep forest green approximate to RAL 6009 Fir Green. There doesn't seem to be an obvious hobby paint match for RAL 6009 which is a pity because this colour would be the preferred choice for the mottle on a home-based Ki-61. Hiroboy offers airbrush acrylic paints custom matched to RAL colours but they are £6.98 for a 60ml jar. If you can bear the heresy WEM's ACJ01 IJN Navy Green is not too bad to represent this colour. And indeed in February 1945 the Army # 27 and the IJN 'deep green black' of D1/D2 were superseded by a new paint colour standard 1-2 common to both services.

The two colours were originally meant to be used together like the Luftwaffe 70/71 greens but in practice were applied haphazardly throughout the war and both were described as "deep green" or "dark green". It is practically impossible to tell which is which from b/w photos of mottled aircraft.

Both colours are ill served by FS equivalents because as with some hobby paints the green hues are not sufficiently rich/saturated and tend towards a bit too greyish. FS 34092 is not much like either colour. FS 34094 is a little closer to # 21 but still too desaturated and greyish. FS 14056 is closer to # 27 but too dark.

If you are happy with a direct equivalent for Mr Color 130 then Humbrol 105 Matt Marine Green is not far off.

Nick