New 1/72 Hayate!

A hat tip to Warren for kindly alerting me to this forthcoming surprise release by Arma Hobby of a new Nakajima Ki-84 Hayate kit in the divine scale. Judging by their previous kits it should be a good one and will relegate previous kits in this scale to secondary consideration. 

The 'expert set' kit due out in April this year offers Ko or Otsu versions of the fighter with photo-etch and a comprehensive decal sheet with options for a well-chosen variety of schemes and markings. The box art nicely reflects Revell's classic 1966 kit in 104 Sentai guise as painted by Brian Knight, but correctly depicts the yellow trim and wingtips of 2nd Chutai leader Lt Mitsuo Tomiya's Hayate.  Other markings options are as follows:-

• Ki-84 '46' of 2 Chutai, 11 Sentai; this is the surviving airframe originally captured in the Philippines. Hayate s/n 1446 was manufactured in December 1944 so should have been in the factory scheme of olive drab, rather than green, over a brownish grey
• Ki-84 '29' of 10 Rensei Hikotai (練成飛行隊 - Training Transformation Air Unit) in unpainted, overall natural metal finish
• Ki-84 '45' of Sakura-tai, 47 Sentai in the factory scheme as flown by Capt Tei-ichi Hatano during the February 1945 air defence sorties against US carrier task force raids
• Ki-84 of 57 Shinbu-tai, one of 15 special attack units organised from within the Akeno Training Air Division in March 1945. It completed training at Shimodate and became operational at the end of May for attacks against US ships off Okinawa   
• Ki-84 of 2nd Yuso Hikotai of the Army Transport Unit at Ota, the Nakajima factory airfield; this white tiger adorned Hayate with unusual reticulated 'giraffe' camouflage was flown by Lt Shuho Yamana of that unit from Ota to the Army Air Depot in Saigon towards the end of 1944 for delivery to a combat unit. The unusual reticulated scheme was seen on some Hayabusa and Hien aircraft as well as Hayate. The tiger was painted on the tail freehand by Lt Terai, the commander of the Seibi Shotai maintenance section of the unit, and differed on each side of the tail fin. It signified the Chinese mythology that a tiger could travel a great distance and return within a single day. 

Follow the link above to see the profiles of these subjects at the Arma Hobby website. Thoughts on Hayate schemes were featured at the blog in November 2013 and November 2014 but a consideration of the reticulated scheme was never completed. Arma Hobby's new kit might inspire that.    

With thanks to Warren for the heads-up on this new and welcome kit.

Update: An in-box review of this kit here with sprue shots and other details. 

Image credit: All © 2022 Arma Hobby

More John Haas Magic

The skilled and resourceful John Haas has kindly shared details of his latest scratch-built project - the Navy Type 10 Carrier Reconnaissance Aircraft, Mitsubishi 2MR1 in 1/48 scale, again inspired by the Choroszy Models catalogue. The type appealed to John as it reminded him of the Boeing DH-4M, a moidel of which he had built with much pleasure years ago. Again information on this type was sparse and John had to resort to one small three-view drawing and a few photos.

So, over to John for his build report:- 

'First I tried to enlarge the drawing to 1/48. The result was not great, barely usable, but at least I could determine the dimensions of the large parts. The smaller details I had to derive from the photos. The fuselage I again constructed according to my tried and tested method, the main parts from thick plastic sheet and the sides covered with thin 0.5 mm sheet. The interior is really guesswork, I could find no information, so I built the interior according to what was typical at the time.

'The wings were built using Mr Harry Woodman's technique. I thought the leading edges were straight, but just in time I discovered that they had a slight sweep-back which was not clearly visible on the drawing. After drilling a lot of holes for the wingstruts and the rigging, I could glue the underwings to the fuselage. The upperwing was another story. The short fuselage-struts are slanted backwards, so I could not follow my usual way of placing the wing on these struts. I had to fabricate a kind of construction- rig to hold the upperwing in place, after that I could glue all the main struts between the wings. And all those loose ends of the rigging did not help either. But perseverance wins and after several attempts everything sat in place.

'Next I could make the tail feathers and parts for the undercarriage. The wheels were again turned with my home made lathe. I searched my spare box for the right prop, but you guessed it! I had to make one myself :-).

'The painting was done between several building stages. I concocted the IJN Green by following Nick's recipe of Humbrol Green 195, Gloss Brunswick Green 3, Oxford Blue 104 and some Black.The under surfaces are painted Revell Light Grey SM 371.

'I hope you enjoy my report with the photographs, so up to the next one!'

Mitsubishi's 2MR1 was designed by Herbert Smith, scaled up from the Type 10 Fighter, and the prototype flew successfully from the Nagoya factory airfield piloted by William Jordan on 12 January 1922. The IJN quickly adopted it as the Type 10 Reconnaissance Aircraft with production commencing that same year and continuing until 1930 with a number of different configurations and a total of 159 constructed. After the type's operational service some were released to civil use for communications and liaison flights, etc., mainly by press organisations. 

With special thanks to John for sharing yet another gem, no kit required!  

Image credit: All © 2022 John Haas