I warned Spiros @fiveten that if he kept flaunting that Nichimo Kate he was resurrecting from the dead, he'd finally inspire me to open the box of the Hasegawa kit I have and do something with it. But no! He kept flaunting that great work! There was only one thing left to do, as he kept shoving his progress in my face. So last night I decided to rise to the challenge.
Hasegawa's 1/48 Kate - kit 09076, JT76 - was first released in 2001. This initial release was the level bomber option, done as a Pearl Harbor bomber with the 16-inch naval shell modified to a bomb used for the attack on Battleship Row. Markings are provided for two options: Mitsuo Fuchida's colorful attack leader, and the Soryu BI-318 flown by pilot Warrant Officer Haruo Sato, observer PO1/c Noboru Kanai, and radio operator/gunner PO2/c Yoshikazu Hanada, the airplane that dropped the bomb that killed USS Arizona. Decals are also provided to allow a modeler to do any B5N2 flown by the six carriers of the Mobile Fleet in the Pearl Harbor attack.
The other releases were of a B5N2 torpedo bomber and a B5N2 radar-equipped anti-submarine aircraft.
I have here a recent release of the first kit, which I got from Burbank House of Hobbies after they deliberately began using "Godfather marketing" ("Make him an offer he cannot refuse"). When I lived over on the East Side, I was a regular customer of Burbank House of Hobbies. They expanded to include online sales, and mail order is cheaper now than the cost of time and gasoline driving across the SFV from over here in the West End, so this was purchased online. If you shop online with them, you are supporting an actual brick-and-mortar shop owned by a very nice guy and run by a couple nice guys. Their prices are competitive with "the big guys" of online mail order, they get it out the door within a working day, and they often have stuff others don't, since they also sell old collections from guys who have finally admitted defeat and decided to sell off the stash they will never get to, and they don't do that at "collector's prices".
The nice thing about this kit is the decals are "new Hasegawa" with actual white on the decals.
As with all of Hasegawa's Japanese kits, the B5N2 is accurate and nicely-detailed. There's a full cockpit. The flaps come either up or down - it turned out I chose the "up" option when I cut one of the flaps off the sprue and managed to cut off the locator pin for the "down" option. Surprisingly for those who have tried to put the flaps up on any other Hasegawa kit with a "flaps down" option, this was very easy. The parts fit just like they should with no modification.
The kit paint instruction calls for the lower sides to be aluminum, but all the modern experts like Nick Millman and the sensei at j-aircraft.com say "Nakajima shade" ameiro; since I have that mixed for a Nakajima-built A6M2, that's what will be used.
I will be doing BI-318, which sank the Arizona and then was shot down over Wake Island on December 22 in the last Marine air battle over the island. This will be in Pearl Harbor attack configuration with the artillery shell bomb.
And this is a whole lot easier than all that great work @fiveten is flaunting.
3 attached images. Click to enlarge.
