Kawasaki Ki-100-Ib***FINISHED***

[PeterB]

Growing up in the 1950/60's without the internet, my knowledge of Japanese and for that matter Italian and Russian aircraft was extremely limited, but on my way back from school in around 1963 I popped into a bookshop and I came across a small book with a red cover – Volume 3 of William Green's “War Planes of the Second World War” which covered Japanese and Russian Fighters. It was truly an eye-opener as until then the only Japanese planes I had heard of were the Zero and Betty! Not long after that Revell UK released their Ki-43 Oscar and Ki-61 Tony, and at some point I had a shot at converting one of the latter into a Ki-100 with a hand carved wooden nose and plenty of plastic wood as I did not have any proper filler. Many years later I replaced the Ki-61 with a Hasegawa kit, and about 10 years ago I finally saw a Ki-100 from RS advertised on Hannants site. I bought one, and a few years later, due to being disorganised I bought another – both are the Ki-100-Ib low back version unfortunately but I do have some Falcon canopies so it time permits I might have a crack at converting one back to a Ki-100-Ia.

 

It is I suppose a typical Czech kit - nicely detailed, with a resin engine, but no locating pins etc and rather vague instructions. I suspect the grey plastic side panels below the bag with the engine and canopy are for their Ki-100-II version which had a turbocharger, of which only 3 were built and it never entered service - they are not used in this build. It also looks like there may be two different upper panels, presumably for different fuselage nose armament - pity they did not also include the high back fuselage as it would save me a lot of work if I do build the second one!

 

I think there are/were a couple of other Ki-100 kits released by other manufacturers. I remember seeing the Aoshima "Goshikisen" in adverts in various mags back in the 70/80's and apparently Fine Moulds did one too. Scalemates say Aoshima brought out a new moulding in 2013 so that may still be available.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

[JOCKNEY]

Great stuff Pete

Another great subject,  best of luck 

Cheers Pat 

[trickyrich]

welcome along Pete, and with a great choice too.

 

It's interesting to see the "extra" bits that were included in the model. There are bound to be a few happy with the inclusion of another version.

 

Good luck with the build, look forward to seeing her in the galley.

[PeterB]

As I can't start on the plastic for a while, here is a bit of thinking aloud about colour schemes, which as I mentioned in the chat section can be problematic.

OK, sweeping generalisation coming up based on the books I have read over the years. Like the JNAF Army planes started off the early 1930's in all over silver and were switching to all over grey in some cases by the end of the decade though those involved in China sometimes had various shades of green and brown on top. After WWII started camo started to creep in but all grey and all silver planes could still be seen at the end of the war – eg Ki-46 and Ki-44/84 respectively. When camo was applied it could be either solid green or in a few cases brown, over either light grey or silver, or it could be a green mottle, again over grey or silver. I think in many cases it was intended to camouflage aircraft on the ground rather than in the air. Here are few examples from my aging collection.

My second and third builds of the Airfix Ki-46. On the left an OOB Ki-46-II in bog standard greenish grey, and on the right my attempt at a Ki-46-III - the Falcon canopy was a bit too wide and it looks like I should have used even more filler.

This is my refurbished Revell Ki-45 Toryu from the 1970's in overall greenish grey with a green mottle as used on the night fighter version with the upwards pointing twin cannon and the home defence "bandages" or white bands. Those spinners were a real PITTA!

And lastly my rather tired looking Hasegawa Ki-44 Shoki in NMF with green patches and their Ki-84 Hayate in overall NMF.

 

As with the JNAF painting undersides tended to be discontinued in the last year of the war so my Ki-100 will be green over NMF but which green. There were at least 2 official shades which seem to have been called Midori Iro and Ohryoku nana go shoku according to the Colourcoats range, the first being a fairly dark green and the last somewhat browner. However given the state of Japanese industry, the supply of raw materials and transport problems I imagine quite a few “improvised” colours were used. If I do get to build both the kits I will try and use two different greens.

 

Pete

[trickyrich]

a nice selection Pete.  

[ArnoldAmbrose]

On 4/11/2022 at 8:22 PM, PeterB said:

until then the only Japanese planes I had heard of were the Zero and Betty!

Gidday Pete, my knowledge was obviously much more advanced than yours - I knew of the 'Sally' bomber too. And, er, that was it.

Later my brother received a 'Dinah' as a gift and I thought it was a very nice looking aircraft. I received a 'Rufe', not knowing it was a float-plane Zero.

And I didn't know it at the time, but just over 15 years later I was going to marry a Sally. 🙂

You have a very nice collection here.    Regards, Jeff.

[Andwil]

Ooh, a Go-shiki Sentoki.  I have this one in the stash so will follow your progress with interest.

 

AW

 

ps.  Auto correct is having fun with the Japanese words!

[PeterB]

As I have mentioned previously I have been a bit overloaded with GB at the start of this year, but 3 are now finished and I can clear my desk and make a start on this. The cockpit is quite well detailed but as you can see from the instructions, the positioning is a bit vague - seems to be normal with RS judging by other modellers experience.

Hopefully it will become a bit clearer when I start putting it together but the location of part 33 is puzzling - particularly as the part provided is a different shape and I can't work out why they say make another part as well - at least I believe that is what the "hand" symbol is supposed to mean ( it actually says "sctrach build" I have pics of the preserved one which was down the road at RAF St Athan with the Ki-46 for a while, but as often happens a fair few of the instruments and the guns and sight are missing. The cockpit is marked as "cockpit green" which is none too helpful but if this is original ( and it looks it) then it must have been a dark green or maybe black.

Then again a pic of the same plane from a different source looks like this.

Much more grey, but they might have used flash as it looks washed out. Plenty of bits sticking out to bang/catch yourself on!

 

Pete

Edited May 7, 2022 by PeterB

[Stew Dapple]

That is an odd interior (on the real aircraft I mean), at that stage of the war the 'official' colour should have been the Ohryoku nana go shoku sort of khaki drab colour but that looks much more like the earlier #3 Hairanshoku ash-indigo colour (at least the darker end of the spectrum of that colour) which was officially replaced in mid-1943... but which can still be seen on the pilot's instrument coaming and windscreen framing on the remains of the Ki-45 in the Smithsonian National Air and Space museum (which was built long after the colour had officially been replaced). Definitely doesn't appear to be a green as mentioned in the instructions; I would have bought #7 or #3 based on the evidence of your photo, or even bare metal for the very late war, but aside from the possibility of medium-dark bottle-green on some intrument/fuse boxes and the like made by subcontractors I don't think there's a shade of green that I'd be comfortable using on the interior of a late-war IJA aircraft - though it should be noted that my knowledge of such things is not encyclopedic  

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[PeterB]

Hi Stew,

 

My own research seems to match yours - at the start of the war JAAF planes seem to have had a dark blue/grey colour in the cockpit, but by mid war  the Ki-61 is said to have been a Khaki/Light Stone colour. However towards the end of the war shortages of time, bodies and even paint meant that there seem to have been ad hoc variations. As with the photos above I have painted part of the floor in natural metal and the rest in darkish blue/grey, rightly or wrongly. If I ever get round to converting my other kit to a Ki-100-1a with the high back I might go for the Khaki.

The IP is hidden by a combination of the machine gun breeches and the coaming they sit on but it is there!

The detail is pretty good but the location pure guesswork. If anything I think the breeches should go further back into the cockpit so I may have to move them later.

 

Pete

Edited May 9, 2022 by PeterB

[PeterB]

Having got the cockpit interior done I fitted it followed by the resin exhaust pipe arrays and two row engine - they were OK but frankly I have seen better detailed plastic offerings so I am not sure why they did them in resin - seems to be normal for relatively short run Czech kits, and as is also normal they did not fit, being too big! I then glued the lot in place and closed up the fuselage, which was, as expected, problematic. A combination of the lack of locating pins and big holes for the alternative nose gun panel and the underside that I mentioned in the intro meant that the fuselage was a bit "wobbly, so I had to glue the cowling ring, top panel, wings and bottom panel on as well to get it lined up passably well. Bit like one of Enzo's builds I guess where it goes from a pile of parts to an almost complete model in 2 or 3 photos😄!

 The fit is not brilliant but nothing some filler and filing/sanding should not fix. The undercarriage legs are decidedly fragile, particularly the tailwheel so they will be left until it is near the end - ditto the gun sight. Compared with the Ki-61 airframe, the bottom of the fuselage is "bulged" slightly which I presume was part of the way they coped with fitting the Ha-112-II radial engine. Reportedly it only took Kawasaki 14 weeks to change the engine once ordered to do so by JAAF in November 1944, the first production machine flying in February 1945. They were probably helped by Aichi's work on the D4A3 which also replaced a DB601 clone with the Ha-112, and both companies produced very neat ways of fitting a 4ft diameter radial to a much narrower fuselage - in the case of the Ki-61 it was only 2ft 9" originally!

 

Pete

[PeterB]

Whilst I am getting on with the filling, time to think about paint. I have just noticed that the two kits I have are different boxings - the only change being the markings, so I have quite a bit of choice!

There is only one duplicate I think so I have the option of 7 different planes, all of which have the "normal" JAAF green uppers except for the lowest one on the top box which is labelled "dark blue grey" - the green did of course vary a bit as I have mentioned elsewhere. The preserved plane had grey undersurfaces and that could be correct, but sources suggest that many planes were being left in natural metal, and indeed this was pretty common on the Ki-61 and I will go with the box instructions and paint mine in aluminium.

 

Incidentally, a correction to a previous post - the breeches sticking back into the cockpit were for 20mm cannon as the armament on the version of the Ki-61 this is based on switched the guns round with the cannon in the fuselage and the mg in the wings, which would probably explain why there are two versions of the top panel in the kit - the other is clearly for mg. so must be meant for one of the Ki-61 kits.

 

Pete

Edited May 10, 2022 by PeterB

[Graham Boak]

One comment to make is that by this time the "normal IJN green" was a browner shade than the one in use earlier the war.  Indeed, often described as brown.  There was a thread on the subject recently which is probably worth your while chasing up.  Colourcoats do a version of this paint but when I used it it came out still too green for my eye, for whatever that's worth.  Possibly it was much like early US Olive Drab which also was often reported as brown, either due to poor matching to the specified hue or through fading, possibly both.

[Stew Dapple]

I did correspond with Nick Millman regarding the #7 IJA Green/Drab/Brown colours, his suggestion was that for the browner/khaki type the undersides were painted with a mix of the top colour and white*, and the darker greener variant were likely to have unpainted metal undersides. As Graham notes the browner/khaki type does have a pretty strong green component, it is one of those colours particularly prone to inducing metamerism; next to something green it looks brown, and next to something brown it looks greener. The darker greener variant looks pretty much like a darkish olive green similar to RAF Dark Green. (For the record and a bit of shameless advertising Colourcoats do both versions )

 

Pete, as you allude I think the 'Dark Blue Grey' markings option may actually suggest the dark green #7 variant, though I suppose the possibility does exist of a dark blue-grey painted aircraft

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

 

* I did ask but wasn't able to get a proportional 'recipe' for the mix, so when I used it I just tried to contrast-match it with period photographs. Despite the uppersurface colour, the undersurface colour did not come out brown but a sort of creamy grey colour.

[PeterB]

Thanks guys,

 

Over the years there have been many claims/illustrations of "odd" schemes, particularly on JAAF planes. Overall Black or  Dark Blue have been mentioned for Ki-43 and Ki-84 I seem to remember and there have been quite a few illustrations of ones in Brown, which are certainly much more credible. I also remember reading that a light blueish grey was used on the undersides of some though that may have been JNAF. As I mentioned earlier, during the later stages of WWII the Japanese do seem to have used several versions of the topside green including one very similar to US Olive Drab. This could have been due to a number of reasons including shortage of the "correct" paint, or even problems with manufacture. The Brits for example had a problem getting the pigments needed to make certain shades of green paint for a while, which is said to be the reason that Army equipment switched from the early base colour of Khaki Green G3 to the brown S.C.C.2 in 1941-42 - apparently it was due to a shortage of chromium oxide according to Mike Starmer. It does not appear to have caused problems for the RAF so either their dark green did not need the stuff in short supply, or they were given priority.

 

Anyway, for this one I have used Tamiya XF-13 IJA Green but I was thinking of using OD if I do another.

It is actually somewhat "yellower" in the flesh that the above pic. From what Stew has said I could be wrong about this but I have gone for an aluminium underside scheme.

 

Pete

Edited May 11, 2022 by PeterB

[Graham Boak]

Not just the British Army but also the RN had to remove green from their camouflages - in this case the Western Approaches scheme invented by Peter Scott.  This was indeed said to be because of priority given to the RAF.

[PeterB]

15 minutes ago, Graham Boak said:

Not just the British Army but also the RN had to remove green from their camouflages - in this case the Western Approaches scheme invented by Peter Scott.  This was indeed said to be because of priority given to the RAF.

Thanks Graham,

 

I had forgotten that.

 

Yes, many of the books I have read over the years complain about the RAF "gobbling up" funds and resources which they suggest might have been better spent on the Army and Navy. They usually accept that during say 1941 and 1942 they were about the only way to actually hit back at Germany, and incidentally I have just finished re-reading Churchill's books on the war where he explains the pressure on the Allies from Stalin, as a result of which they had to be seen to be doing something to take pressure off the Russians. As to whether or not the RAF should have continued to take the Lion's Share of the resources after that is always going to be open to debate.

 

Pete

[Graham Boak]

Agreed, but there are more important aspects of this than the use of a specific pigment.  RN use was very small, and I don't think that there's any evidence of the Army being adversely affected by using brown for a few years - they did manage to produce a perfectly acceptable olive green with SCC15 without using chromium oxide.  But unless evidence is found of specific Japanese problems with pigments (as opposed to oil and other strategic materials) then suggesting it as a cause of late-war colour changes is just imaginative.  Maybe: but if the Allies didn't have the Chromium Oxide, and the Axis powers suffered from severe shortages of strategic materials, then who did?

[PeterB]

I did only say that there might have been a number of reasons for the variation, one of which may have been problems with the manufacture of the paint, using the Army problem as an example of what could happen!

 

Pete

[PeterB]

Looking at other modeller's posts in various current GB it seems that RS Models can sometimes be a problem, though it may depend on how recent they are - this is a 2012 moulding. As a short run production it has problems with both vague instructions and a lack of locating marks/pins etc, but at least there are some - the cockpit bulkheads, IP and seat have reasonable mountings, but then there is nothing to indicate where to line the assembly up inside the fuselage for example! The horizontal tail is a bit better than the old plain "butt fit" as it has a small dent in the fuselage and a likewise small "tab" to go in it, which sounds good but unfortunately some comedian decided to attach it to the sprue by the tab, and it requires very careful trimming and filing to reinstate the profile. In short it is not a kit for beginners, but once assembled, at least so far, it does not look too bad and has some nice restrained detailing.

 I have given it a coat of varnish so it is decal time!

 

Pete

[PeterB]

Oh dear !

 

Whoever designed the decal sheet was clearly not a modeller.

This is off the other kit and to give you some sense of scale the sheet it 4.5cm high in the above pic. The very thin yellow lines and stencils are all crammed in together so close that I dare not use scissors on them. I have therefore had to delicately use a new scalpel blade and it is a nightmare. Inevitably the stress the blade causes tends to bend the decs and it was no great surprise when the lines broke up. I managed to get one set on and put some liquid decal film on the rest of the sheet, though I will now have to use a scalpel to separate the decs as the film will otherwise cause more than one to come off the paper at once - can't ruddy win. This is going to take quite some time I think! 

 

Pete

Edited May 11, 2022 by PeterB

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

23 minutes ago, PeterB said:

Oh dear1

 

Whoever designed the decal sheet was clearly not a modeller.

This is off the other kit and to give you some sense of scale the sheet it 2.2cm high in the above pic. The very thin yellow lines and stencils are all crammed in together so close that I dare not use scissors on them. I have therefore had to delicately use a new scalpel blade and it is a nightmare. Inevitably the stress the blade causes tends to bend the decs and it was no great surprise when the lines broke up. I managed to get one set on and put some liquid decal film on the rest of the sheet, though I will now have to use a scalpel to separate the decs as the film will otherwise cause more than one to come off the paper at once - can't ruddy win. This is going to take quite some time I think! 

 

Pete

I hate when companies do this. 

[Stew Dapple]

The model's looking good Pete, but I feel your pain regarding the transfers; as you say, whoever designed them obviously wasn't planning on having to use them  

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[PeterB]

Too true Stew, and having spent time putting a few of them on I am having my doubts about them.

There are a couple of other small ones to go in the "box" over the wing guns but they look far too visible to me - compared with the old Hasegawa late model Ki-61.

Not sure about the black background- that could just be the decs going off with age as they do. The preserved one, for what it is worth, just seems to have the big letters over the flaps in yellow, but I have found one b&w photo showing both the letters and lines in a dark colour, so I think maybe RS had the right idea but the wrong colour.

 

Compared with the Hinomaru they look more like black than red to me.

So I have probably 3 options-

1. leave them as they are and tone them down by giving them a wash of green.

2. Overpaint everything bar the big letters.

3. Try and replace them with some home made red or black decs.

 

Anybody got any thoughts?

 

Pete

Edited May 12, 2022 by PeterB

[Stew Dapple]

Hi Pete,

 

Yes I see what you mean, I know yellow can sometimes represent as very dark on a certain type of film, but the propeller tip warnings look very light in the picture you attached so we can assume that the wing step warning isn't yellow... of course that doesn't mean that they were never painted in yellow - I've just checked the Fine Molds Ki-100 in the stash and the warning stencils are provided in red, black and yellow so there is definitely the prospect of yellow being used in some cases - the border lines also appear more visible than the Hasegawa photo you uploaded but perhaps slightly less than the RS transfers.

 

As to what you should do about it, I really can't say, but if it were me I'd go with what you already have rather than attempt remedial action which really might not even be neccessary, but I am notoriously lazy  

 

Cheers,

 

Stew