Navy Type 13 No.3 carrier-based attack aircraft modified seaplane (Mitsubishi 3MT2) by John Haas Pt.3

The third and final part of this magnificent scratch-build project from the skilful John Haas, the first and second parts to be found here and here. A three bay biplane is challenging enough in kit form (think Frog Vimy) but this model had the added complication of strutted floats. The inclusion of figures and another floatplane model in the photos demonstrate how comparatively large this aircraft was. A masterpiece. Over to John then.  

'Dear readers, after building the main parts, I could turn my attention to all the tiny bits and pieces and in between, do some painting.

'First I painted all the struts black, thereafter the floats got their silver finish. As usual I left part of the fuselage unpainted so that I could handle the model without damaging the paint.

'Whilst the paint was drying, I kept myself busy with the construction of a beaching trolley and some wooden supports. The trolley is loosely based on several different examples which I found on photographs on the internet.

'I then paid some extra attention to the construction of a scarff-ring and the machine gun, I had some leftover kit parts, but they were rather bulky and not accurate, so with some stretched sprue I made the parts from scratch.

'So I arrived at applying the last details; the control horns and cables. 

'Finally, what was left were the Hinomaru. They are big and I had no more left in my spare decal clippings box, so I had to print them with my PC printer on white decal paper. 

'I would have liked, to include the nice Japanese logos and scripts on my model, but I had no luck finding a good example which I could use as a print pattern. And to paint them by hand . . . I only can manage the ' no step ' markings in Kana! :-)

'To conclude the build, I handpainted the red warning strips on the floats. With the large stringers on the floats a decal would not have worked here. Model finished!  

'To summarise I had great fun building this model, although I knew that the floats and struts construction would be tricky - and sure it was! :-) 

'And later I discovered the reason for the double wings truts, the outer wings could be folded backwards, so the inner wing needed extra support struts.'

With very special thanks to John for sharing these images and details of a challenging build - from scratch! - and with a superlative result.

Image credit: All photos © 2023 John Haas