Nakajima Ki-115 Tsurugi, Ota Factory, September 1945

[Volksjager]

The Ki-115 was an aircraft that was designed purely for suicide attacks & was to be flown by unskilled pilots. Nakajima started designed for the aircraft in January 1945. It was to be built with non strategic materials & would utilise a variety of engines, though in practice all machines were built with the Ha-115. A semi concealed bomb was to be carried on the underside of the aircraft and the landing gear would be jettisoned after takeoff. First flights were made as early as March, 1945 & a number of problems were found such as issues with visibility, the unsprung gear caused vibration & take off was difficult. Though problems were fixed it never saw combat & never received an allied code name because of this. 104 machine were built before the end of the war with one left in existence today. 

 

The Special Hobby kit was quite surprising as you get quite a bit for your money & the detail was pretty good. The panel lines were finely engraved plus you got a small sheet of etch & some resin parts such as the engine, exhaust stubs, intake & the bomb. The best part is I found this one locally second hand from another modeller for $10

 

The boxing covers 3 different paint schemes which were the 3 stages of paint completion at the Ota factory (NMF, NMF with dark green around insignia & Dark green over grey green). My heart straight away went to the first stage of completion, which is overall NMF with just the insignia painted. Some quick research found a series of pics from inside the factory around September 1945 

 

So I got straight into the build, with minimal pictures taken during construction because I wasn't sure if this was one that would work out or not. A quick test fit showed with a little adjustment things were lining up pretty good which was promising. Unfortunately no cockpit shots either, not that you can see much, but the pit was overall wood so brown tones with some interior green on the side walls. With that finished the rest went together pretty quick with no real issued other than the wing underside join to the body. The joint itself was fine but I found I had to sand away some material to round the insert to match the fuselage. The majority of the smaller round or tubular parts were replaced with brass tube in matching diameters, except for the main gear which was just cleaned up & used. I even remade the rear shock absorber on the tail skid by wrapping some copper wire around brass tube. The canopy was dipped in Future for clarity & masks were used on the tiny canopy for painting. The hardest part were the exhaust stacks, which had to be trimmed and glued onto the edge of the cowl otherwise they would not have sat properly. 

 

The overall colour is SMS Stainless steel as I wanted the darker, shinier tone to match the pictures. The empennage & Ailerons are SMS Super silver to represent painted fabric as seen on the last existing example of the aircraft. The wingtips & landing gear are SMS Steel & the anti glare strip is SMS anti glare. All insignia were cut using my Cricut cutter then painted on. Though I modified the included propeller to have  an enclosed spinner I decided to leave it off as I prefer the aircraft with it removed & wanted to display as it was found in the Ota factory. The weathering was done with a small amount of Tamiya panel liner & weathering pigments. 

 

Now I did say I wanted it to look as it did back in the Ota factory, so that would require a factory floor! I used a piece of styrene for the base, covering the surface with Tamiya grey putty thinned with extra thin cement & stippled on with a short brush. When dry some groves were cut with a scribe & once again stippled with the same mix, then lightly sanded once dry. The base was primed in black before various grey tones were marbled on & a flat coated applied. Finally Tamiya panel liner was used to highlight the groves, scratches & dents as well as producing oil stains. Not to bad for a first attempt at anything like this though maybe a little to blue grey.

 

Now I just got to work out what I am going to stick the base to! 

 

Very happy with this build and how it turned out & would happily build this kit again if I ever found another.

[Toryu]

Nice Tsurugi! The base looks excellent, even though I don't quite understand how the even surface is achieved with your method?

[Zigomar]

Unusual and well done, what else!

[Volksjager]

Thanks for the kind words guys!

 

8 hours ago, Toryu said:

Nice Tsurugi! The base looks excellent, even though I don't quite understand how the even surface is achieved with your method?

 

The idea I had for the base is very similar to creating rolled steel texture on armour. The thin putty isnt to bad of a surface to start with but the light sand is what knocks off the ridges to create the smooth surface. Once the primer hits is it the surface texture is almost exactly what I wanted for concrete

[BerndM]

Excellent work on this bird.

[Ngantek]

Beautifullly made! Those SMS metallics look great, and the scratchbuilding really adds to the result. The slightly worn look you get on the stainless is an effect I've been trying to work out how to do for a while. Is it just washed and somewhat left dirty or is there some stippling effect that you apply to the centre of those panels?

Despite its somewhat sinister history, I've always thought the Tsurugi was a beautiful aircraft and had written off hope of finding an Eduard one, so seeing from here there was an SH version, and in a scale that might fit inside my house, I've gone and got one as well!

[NMLeonov]

Fantastic build and equally interesting writeup!

[obdl3945]

A really nice finish on this unusual aircraft... ;-).

[Volksjager]

Thanks for all the kind words guys! Really appreciate it.

 

On 4/12/2022 at 12:36 AM, Ngantek said:

Beautifullly made! Those SMS metallics look great, and the scratchbuilding really adds to the result. The slightly worn look you get on the stainless is an effect I've been trying to work out how to do for a while. Is it just washed and somewhat left dirty or is there some stippling effect that you apply to the centre of those panels?

Despite its somewhat sinister history, I've always thought the Tsurugi was a beautiful aircraft and had written off hope of finding an Eduard one, so seeing from here there was an SH version, and in a scale that might fit inside my house, I've gone and got one as well!

 

The SMS metallic are very easy to use. I mainly use the Super silver and tone it down with washes etc but the stainless steel is just a great look. The base underneath is gloss black which I was very happy with. Once dry I used a thin panel liner wash then just pigments over the top for wear. The interesting effect comes when you apply stainless steel over the top of Super silver, brings out the gold tones in the colour which is what I doing at the moment on my current build 

 

I have also given up on the Eduard version though maybe one day I will get it 

Edited April 14, 2022 by Volksjager

[Wulfman]

Excellent build and finish, first one I’ve seen built !

 

Wulfman