Massimo Giugnoli's Hien and Shoki

Correspondent Massimo Giugnoli of Rome very kindly sent these images of his superb Hasegawa  1/32nd scale Kawasaki Ki-61 Hien 'Tony' and 1/48th scale Nakajima Ki-44 Shoki 'Tojo'. The splendid Hien represents s/n 3295, one of the colourful aircraft flown by the famous 244th Sentai CO Captain Teruhiko Kobayashi. Massimo used the figure of Captain Kobayashi included in the kit, painting it very convincingly with Vallejo acrylics, and added the MG 151/20 wing gun compartment detail from a Wolfpack accessory set. The model was painted with Tamiya and GIS Creos (Gunze) paints using a Tamiya airbrush operated at low pressure to achieve the excellent representation of the mottle.

The basic natural metal finish was applied using Mr Color # 8 with Aqueous Hobby Color H60 IJA Green for the mottle. The red tail feathers are Tamiya XF-7 and the control surfaces a mix of H62 IJA Grey and H74 Sky. Yellow leading edge IFF  strips are H24 Orange Yellow.

The Ki-44-II Hei model was built from the box as 'Asakaze' (Morning Breeze), an aircraft of the 104th  Sentai active in the air  defence  of  Mukden, Manchuria  in the autumn of 1944. Massimo describes  himself  as  a  "fanatic of  IJA  aircraft" and his passion shows in these two splendid models of classic Army fighters. I hope that we will be able to see more of them from him in future.

Image credits: All model photographs © 2014 Massimo Giugnoli