Mistercraft Mi-4A boxlid camo - fake or true?

[KRK4m]

There is a 1/72 kit of the Soviet most widespread piston-engined chopper.

https://www.scalemates.com/kits/mistercraft-f-04-mil-mi-4a-hound--1194890

Between 1953 and 1988 almost 4000 of them (the total of US H-19 and H-34 combined) were used all over the Eastern hemisphere.

Hundreds of them - serving in African and Asiatic countries - wore multi-colour camouflages. Even Czech and Polish examples were painted in two (or even three) greens over blue.

But I have never seen a Soviet Mi-4 sporting the multi-colour uppersurface camouflage except for this specimen from the Mistercraft F-04 box lid. 

And I wonder if anybody of you have ever met a multi-colour (i.e. not plain green over blue) camouflaged Mi-4 in Soviet service? Is the Mistercraft scheme true or fake?

Chers

Michael

[Aardvark]

2 hours ago, KRK4m said:

But I have never seen a Soviet Mi-4 sporting the multi-colour uppersurface camouflage except for this specimen from the Mistercraft F-04 box lid. 

Mistercraft don't believe in this camouflage scheme too, because in instructions she show ordinary green/blue camouflage (number 2 ) scheme:

😉😁😁😁

Separately laughed from their Russian in the instructions.

 

B.R.

Serge

 

P.S. But I will look

in Russian segment internet about multi camouflage Mi-4....

[KRK4m]

I seems to me that some 40 years ago I have seen the photo of the camouflaged Mi-4 destroyed in Afghanistan war.

However I have no idea whether it was the Soviet or Afghan aircraft...

In Poland the ASW Mi-4ME variant wore the plain green/light blue camo till the end of service, while the army Mi-4As became multi-coloured already in the late 1960s.

Cheers

Michael

 

[Aardvark]

3 hours ago, KRK4m said:

I seems to me that some 40 years ago I have seen the photo of the camouflaged Mi-4 destroyed in Afghanistan war.

However I have no idea whether it was the Soviet or Afghan aircraft...

Most probably it's was Afghan helicopter, because as written in Wikipedia:

https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ми-4

"It was widely used for civilian transportation, in the national economy and the Armed Forces until the mass appearance of the Mi-8 in the 70s."

"Separate copies of the Mi-4 were operated until the end of the 1980s.  The decision to write off all Mi-4 helicopters in operation in the USSR was made following an investigation into the Mi-4A crash that occurred on February 2, 1988 in the Chita Region [3]."

In the same time:

 

https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ми-8

 

"After a number of refinements, the Mi-8 was put into mass production in 1965 and adopted by the Soviet Air Force in 1967 and proved to be such a successful machine that Mi-8 purchases for the Russian Air Force continue to this day [8]."

 

I think that over the 12 years from 1967 to 1979, it was completely possible to replace all Mi-4s with Mi-8s in the armed forces.

Therefore, it is unlikely that the Soviet Mi-4 could be in Afghanistan .... if only they did not play the role of the Afghan Mi-4 at the beginning of the invasion ..... but then they should have looked like the Afghan Mi-4 with Afghan insignia.

 

B.R. 

Serge

 

Edited February 8, 2020 by Aardvark