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KI 61 interior colour


oz rb fan

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i'm looking at starting the new tamiya Ki61,and i was wondering what the interior colour should be the kit advise's a sand colout (tamiya XF59) but i wanted to check before starting the model.

i plan on doing the plain sliver one with the red strip from February 1945 if thats any help.

Paul  

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It's widely stated that at least one of the colors used in Ki-61 cockpits was a sandy brown fairly similar to RLM 79. I've also read statements that the color was lighter and less reddish. According to a post at Hyperscale, Ian K. Baker, in his book on IJAAF colors, listed a color close to FS 33448, which is a much lighter beige-tan than the RLM 79 chip in Merrick's Luftwaffe book.

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FWIW I wouldn't use RLM 79 or any hobby paint permutations representing that colour and Tamiya XF-59 is a bit bright. I don't know where the idea came from but maybe connected to the confusion over "Italian sand" and RLM 79.

 

For a pre-factory painted nmf Ki-61 the interior paint was not stable and you could use either a dull khaki like FS 33440 or the standard IJA grey-green exterior colour or a mix of both together - for the grey-green Gunze's Mr Color 128 or Hobby Color H62 is preferable to the Tamiya XF-14. Whichever you choose wheel wells and the inner faces of the undercarriage doors should be painted the same colour as the cockpit interior. 

 

Nick

 

 

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55 minutes ago, Nick Millman said:

FWIW I wouldn't use RLM 79 or any hobby paint permutations representing that colour and Tamiya XF-59 is a bit bright. I don't know where the idea came from but maybe connected to the confusion over "Italian sand" and RLM 79.

 

For a pre-factory painted nmf Ki-61 the interior paint was not stable and you could use either a dull khaki like FS 33440 or the standard IJA grey-green exterior colour or a mix of both together - for the grey-green Gunze's Mr Color 128 or Hobby Color H62 is preferable to the Tamiya XF-14. Whichever you choose wheel wells and the inner faces of the undercarriage doors should be painted the same colour as the cockpit interior. 

 

Nick

 

 

 

Would that also be true of the Ki-100? I would have thought so, but it's best to check!

 

thanks

Mike

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42 minutes ago, Mikemx said:

 

Would that also be true of the Ki-100? I would have thought so, but it's best to check!

 

thanks

Mike

 

Unlikely but not impossible. Although the extant interior paint of Ki-100 reveals a bit of a mixture of paint colours the majority should have had cockpits in the exterior # 7 olive brown colour which by then had become standard but varied in hue (like US OD) - the majority of s/n 13363's cockpit was in the exterior colour (a deep olive green slightly more yellowish-olive than FS 34083), whilst the floor was brownish-grey, perhaps re-painted in service, and the electrical panel and conduits were a greyish khaki brown, possibly all variants of the # 7 colour being applied by Kawasaki which varied in batches - but it is a bubbletop. However the Ki-100 were both constructed from "headless" Ki-61 airframes and new built so all bets are off as to what colours individual so-called ko (razorback) aircraft might have revealed inside. The incomplete Ki-61 airframes found hidden in the vicinity of the Kagamigahara plant at the end of the war were unpainted and their interiors might have reflected earlier practice when they were re-built as Ki-100.  

 

Nick

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The kit I have is the Fine Molds 1/72 Ki-100-I with the bubble canopy. The instructions do indeed quote RLM 79 as the main interior colour with instrument panels in Black. I'm using Vallejo's recently released IJA Model Air set for the colours, as Vallejo is my preferred option for paints. The set contains 2 Brown colours - Dark Beige and Khaki Brown. The paint guide on the box has the Dark Beige as the Brown used as camouflage with Dark Green and the Khaki Brown as the colour used to paint aircraft where the Brown is the only on the upper surfaces (like the Brown Ki-46's). Would either of these colours be roughly equal to the #7 Olive Brown you mention? Dead quick question on the exterior colours - the instructions quote a Dark Green top colour over either NMF or painted Silver undersides, is this correct?

 

thanks

Mike  

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My suggestion, FWIW, is to use what Vallejo describe as Olive Green (AV71286) on both the interior and exterior and forget RLM 79. You could also use the Dark Green (AV71285) but it is a bit too light and too green to be typical of Ki-100s, although it looks deeper with a varnish over it. 

 

I have recently reviewed the Vallejo sets at my blog. The comments afterwards give them a bit of stick over usability but ignore the colour comparisons which were the main point of my blogging! 

 

Nick

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52 minutes ago, Mikemx said:

Thanks Nick. Expect to see a Ki-100 in the RFI inspection in the not too distant future then! What is the correct (or most likely) underside colour on the Ki-100?

 

thanks

Mike

I'm not Nick, but the most likely (or nearly certain) underside Ki-100 color is unpainted metal.

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thanks guys......i'll be doing the natural metal KI61 tei in the Tamiya kit...i'm told the fuslage stripes are the wrong colour and the kill markings are also wrong..the stripes i can fix easily as it has a set of blue stripes in the kit,but the kill markings i'm not able to fix.

but it looks like the interior will be IJA green.

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On ‎18‎.‎04‎.‎2017 at 0:56 PM, Nick Millman said:

I have recently reviewed the Vallejo sets at my blog. The comments afterwards give them a bit of stick over usability but ignore the colour comparisons which were the main point of my blogging! 

 

Nick

 

Because we had nothing useful to add to your colour comparisons?

They have been noted, not ignored :D

 

Vedran

 

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12 hours ago, Nick Millman said:

Why will the interior be IJA green? 

 

Nick

sorry...ija grey/green as you said above...late night and all....i gather that would mean pretty much the colour used on the undersides on JAAF aircraft earier in the war?

 

Edited by oz rb fan
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8 hours ago, oz rb fan said:

sorry...ija grey/green as you said above...late night and all....i gather that would mean pretty much the colour used on the undersides on JAAF aircraft earier in the war?

 

 

Yes, more usually an overall colour, but most hobby paints will need toning down slightly with a little brown (umber type) to make them "warmer" or the cockpit will look a bit stark.

 

Nick  

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Slightly late to the party, but I've recently obtained the Aoshima 1/72 Ki-61-II Kai (bubbletop) kit and I was wondering what colour the cockpit of that aircraft would be? The same as a late production Ki-61 or as per the Ki-100?

 

The Aoshima kit looks nice on the sprue, but my kit's missing one of the wing gun inserts (a short-shot?) for which I'll have to scratch build a replacement.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Mike.:)

Edited by MikeR
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3 hours ago, MikeR said:

Slightly late to the party, but I've recently obtained the Aoshima 1/72 Ki-61-II Kai (bubbletop) kit and I was wondering what colour the cockpit of that aircraft would be? The same as a late production Ki-61 or as per the Ki-100?

 

The Aoshima kit looks nice on the sprue, but my kit's missing one of the wing gun inserts (a short-shot?) for which I'll have to scratch build a replacement.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Mike.:)

I can't back this up with any documentation, but I should have thought that the change-over to Yellow-Green #7 for the cockpit color would have coincided with (or followed) its adoption as the exterior camouflage color. If the -II Kai you're building was still in the overall unpainted "scheme" (with or without applied mottle), then I'd say the cockpit was probably still in the yellow-gray-tan-greenish color described above.

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17 hours ago, MikeR said:

Slightly late to the party, but I've recently obtained the Aoshima 1/72 Ki-61-II Kai (bubbletop) kit and I was wondering what colour the cockpit of that aircraft would be? The same as a late production Ki-61 or as per the Ki-100?

 

The Aoshima kit looks nice on the sprue, but my kit's missing one of the wing gun inserts (a short-shot?) for which I'll have to scratch build a replacement.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Mike.:)

 

Aoshima suggest Mr Color 128 which is the IJA Grey Green but FWIW I think the exterior colour is probably more likely for a bubbletop. You could use either and I doubt that you could be proved wrong.  Aoshima suggest Mr Color 130 Dark Green (Kawasaki) for the exterior which is ok but not really brown enough. The box art gives a better impression. The spinner should be the same exterior colour and not brown. The original paint on the RAF Museum Ki-100 was matched to Munsell 10 Y 3/2 which is still a little browner than FS 14079, a richly saturated olive brown probably best matched by some of the US OD hobby paints. 

 

Nick  

 

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Thanks guys, much appreciated!B)

 

Nick, I was thinking of using Colour Coats ACJ22 IJAAF #7 Ohryoku nana go shoku, would that be alright? Any recommendations for the prop blade colour? I'm currently planning on going to the Perth Model show this weekend and I was going to swing past the Sovereign Hobbies stand to buy some paint.

 

Mike.:)

Edited by MikeR
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Yes, that will be alright. Again, because of the uncertainties about II Kai production you have a choice regarding prop blades. You could either use the standard dark brown "prop colour" or go for the Ki-100 colour which is similar to FS 34082 and RAL 6003 (Revell 361).

 

Nick

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1 hour ago, Nick Millman said:

Yes, that will be alright. Again, because of the uncertainties about II Kai production you have a choice regarding prop blades. You could either use the standard dark brown "prop colour" or go for the Ki-100 colour which is similar to FS 34082 and RAL 6003 (Revell 361).

 

Nick

Hi Nick. We did some forum conversing on that topic back in 2015. Here's part of what you said then:

 

"When factory painting was introduced the # 7 colour was supposed to be applied to props and spinners as well. Although the Ki-100 has almost always been depicted in references as having dark brown spinners and prop blades an extant Ki-61- I Tei spinner is painted in the # 7 colour. However the University of Illinois (Urbana Campus) Kawasaki K-100 (bubbletop) appears to have had a dark brown prop.

"How consistently that was being applied is unknown but most people will still expect to see dark brown spinners and blades on a Ki-100!"

 

Is there different information now?

Pip

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9 hours ago, Seawinder said:

Hi Nick. We did some forum conversing on that topic back in 2015. Here's part of what you said then:

 

"When factory painting was introduced the # 7 colour was supposed to be applied to props and spinners as well. Although the Ki-100 has almost always been depicted in references as having dark brown spinners and prop blades an extant Ki-61- I Tei spinner is painted in the # 7 colour. However the University of Illinois (Urbana Campus) Kawasaki K-100 (bubbletop) appears to have had a dark brown prop.

"How consistently that was being applied is unknown but most people will still expect to see dark brown spinners and blades on a Ki-100!"

 

Is there different information now?

Pip

 

The question was about propeller blades and not spinners. Although # 7 was supposed to be applied to the whole prop the blades on some late war types were painted a different green. This has been well known by modellers in the case of Hayate but not for some other types. The reason for this and the precise changeover is not known. The green colour mentioned was reported for Ki-84, Ki-87, Ki-43-III, Ki-94, Ki-100, Ki-102 and Ki-106 but not specifically for Ki-61-II. However, the Ki-61-II and Ki-100 props were both made at the Sumitomo Tsu plant and shipped to Kagamigahara Army Air Arsenal rather than direct to the aircraft manufacturers, hence my suggestion of there being a choice regarding the colour of the II Kai prop blades.

 

The point about what people expect to see is still valid. To some the green blades on a II Kai would look "wrong".

 

Nick     

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18 hours ago, Nick Millman said:

Yes, that will be alright. Again, because of the uncertainties about II Kai production you have a choice regarding prop blades. You could either use the standard dark brown "prop colour" or go for the Ki-100 colour which is similar to FS 34082 and RAL 6003 (Revell 361).

 

Nick

 

Thanks Nick!B)

 

I like the idea of the green blades, so I may well go with that.

 

Mike.:)

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22 hours ago, Nick Millman said:

Yes, that will be alright. Again, because of the uncertainties about II Kai production you have a choice regarding prop blades. You could either use the standard dark brown "prop colour" or go for the Ki-100 colour which is similar to FS 34082 and RAL 6003 (Revell 361).

 

Nick

HI Nick (or anyone)

 

Just to clarify,  RAL6003 is a similar colour for  the overall exterior colour of the Ki-100?  

 

Thanks

T

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