1/32 Hasegawa Mitsubishi J2M3 Raiden 'Jack'

[Stew Dapple]

Morning gents

 

Here is my eighth completed kit of the year, the Hasegawa Mitsubishi J2M3 Raiden (allied code name 'Jack') representing an aircraft of the 302^nd Naval Flying Group flown by Lt. Susumu Ito from Atsugi Naval Air Base, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan in March 1945:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The kit was built almost entirely OOB except that I replaced the pitot tube with two sections of Albion Alloys brass and nickel tubing. The aerial wire was made from Infini Lycra thread, white, 110 denier. I used the Eduard canopy mask set designed for this kit.

 

The paints used were from the Colourcoats IJN/IJA range and were ACJ18 - IJN Interior Olive Green; ACJ03 - IJN D2 Green Black/IJA #27 Blue Green; ACJ12 - IJA #1 Hairyokushoku; ACJ08 - Mitsubishi Cowl Blue Black; ACJ19 - ID Yellow and ACJ23 - Propeller Brown. I'd like to record a special thanks to @Nick Millman for the Raiden colour guide which sorted a lot of queries for me and gave me a bit more confidence in the accuracy of the finished model - available for a donation from the Aviation of Japan website, scroll down on the right hand sidebar.

 

The kit transfers were used and were nicely printed, beautifully coloured but pretty thick and more or less impervious to setting solutions. I limited the weathering to some faint exhaust staining made with various shades of pastel pencil, a little 'blowback' from the cannon shell ejector chutes using the same method and a bit of wing-root scuffing with two shades of Citadel Acrylic grey for the 'older' more oxidised chipping and their Runefang Steel colour for the 'fresher' chips. Raidens were painted at the factory and generally seemed to retain their paintwork well except at the wingroot where the pilot and ground crew would access the aircraft, although I did find one picture where the paint appeared to be sloughing off the fuselage spine quite dramatically; this doesn't seemt to have been typical though.

 

Build thread is here. Thanks for your attention

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[CedB]

Very nice Stew, a beautiful result (as usual)  

Nice chipping too, good job mate.

[Vinnie]

Stew, That is very, very good. I especially like what I can see of the pilot. Paintwork deserves a big👍 .

[Gorby]

EIGHT builds this year! Slow down, you're making the rest of us look like we're not trying hard enough.

That would be impressive even if your builds were 'average', but this is excellent. That pilot looks amazing.

[Knight_Flyer]

Very nice build. Good seeing a Raiden not in the usual twin lightning bolt markings and not with as much weathering 

[GREG DESTEC]

Brilliant Stew!

 

Well done with the restrained weathering. 

 

All the best. Greg 😁

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Great work on your Jack 👍 Really enjoyed the build. 

[spitfire]

Nice one, a really distinctive looking aircraft, hopefully reading through your build might just get me in the mood to restart my stalled Hayate build.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[Unfinished project]

Nice build and as mentioned above subtle weathering brings it to life

[Cookenbacher]

Outstanding Stew, especially the paint work and pilot figure!

[FAAMAN]

Agree with all the above statements, an excellent piece of OOB modelling, well done