Recently I purchased some books from Avonmore in Australia. The reason why I’m posting this is because it covers the aircraft from the unit that your Zero was assigned to.
It’s called Pacific Profiles Volume Five, and it’s written by a gentleman named Michael John Claringbould. He’s traveled / lived in the South Pacific and he has done a great job with his research and he has backed up his conclusions with photographs.
Here’s a good picture of a Zero wing that was recently recovered in 2020 at Guadalcanal. The really good news is that this wing was found face down so the paint survived relatively intact.
What I really found interesting about the picture is how dark the Green looks on this particular aircraft.
The author is also an excellent artist who has included a lot of profiles. This is just one of the many pages that are found in this book.
Lastly he has written that this particular Japanese outlined the Hinomaru on the fuselage and upper wings with what he called a white “piping circle”.
This White ring that surrounds the Hinomaru was only used on the Zeros that were camouflage painted in the field.
He stated that these White outlined Hinomaru were always visible in every photo of the field camouflaged Zeros that were assigned to 204th Kokutai.
For anyone who is interested in this subject or interested in building one of the Eduard Zeros this book is highly recommended.
