G’day Woody (@wkubacki),

Looking at the black and white photo of this aircraft in the book, it is evident that the colour is not as dark as the green of the one above.

The contrast with both the red and the black anti-glare panel is more than for the green above, but not so strong that it looks too light.

There is also reasonable contrast with the white, too.

Also, “light blue” is a relative description - compared to US Insignia Blue or Sea Blue, say.

Add in fading and the light at that lattitude and colours will look lighter than on a sample card.

So why paint the aircraft blue, anyway?

Perhaps it was for operations over the sea, as they did undertake a lot of convoy escort ops.

I think your choice of 6-2 is more likely than the light 6-3.

I'm back, after some self inflicted wounds. After painting the plane blue, I went over it with highly thinned C72 Intermediate blue. Then I started on the chipping... and after all was said and done... I didn't like it. While the wings of the plane are not very visible in the photos I have, the starboard fuselage was, and it had moderate chipping. My mistake was to combine chipping from various Oscars captured in theatre, making for an overly chipped plane (mostly on the fuselage. So out came the sandpaper and primer and I sanded down the areas I wanted to redo. None of this I really wanted to do, but since there were photos of the plane in questions, I really had to make is similar to the real thing

6 attached images. Click to enlarge.

A nice correction on the chipping, Woody @wkubacki
All looks very realistic.

Woody Kubacki (@wkubacki)
Incredible ! This plane looks outstanding, and you can't tell where the repairs were made. Well done.

The bare aluminum base looks excellent. Many years ago I did something similar with a 1/48 scale Tamiya Ki-84 Frank.

But mine pales in comparison to what you are doing here. I sincerely mean that. The Blue color used over the bare metal is something that I have never seen before.

Undersides weathering looks superb, my friend @wkubacki!

Finally completed! I really dragged my a*s on this kit, with long breaks without any progress. Overall I'm pretty happy with this build, there are some areas that I missed that I could improve upon, and I will do so for the next Oscar build (in progress). Thanks for the kind comments and encouragement along the way gents, it's really nice to have a supportive and like minded work to share by builds with.

16 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Very impressive result, Woody @wkubacki
Great achievement on the painting and weathering.