Well here are 'Busa and her Sisters, the Girls from Nakajima, all together after many years. (For some reason, the Girls all have boy's names). Frank was first, Tojo next and Nate later. Finally Oscar has joined them. These aeroplanes dominated the Japanese Army Air Force through the war, with only a little help from their cousins Nick and Tony. I took the already-builts down from their dusty shelves and got out the Windex and paper towels. Man they were dirty birdies, took a while to get all the grunge off. (Spider poop is the worst). Q-tips and spit work surprisingly well on canopies.I am jealous of you types with display cases. Anyway they cleaned up nicely and agreed to pose for pics, individual and group. The group pics swamped my photo area and available lighting, which is the kitchen table, so pardon the borders.
To me, these are some beautiful machines-and all weapons of war. Who woulda thunk it. In Christopher Shore's excellent book, "Air War for Burma", there is a great quote from Flg Off Bill Andrews, RAF, from his diary. He said, "I was always struck by the beautiful paintwork and turn-out of the 'Oscars'. They looked like beautiful oversized toys and it was hard to think of them as lethal, but they were..."
Anyways that completes this thread and saga. The Shiden-kai was supposed to be next but apparently the Corona slows have delayed my mask set's arrival from Australia. One of Our colleagues (Traas) is a Luftwaffle nut and challenged me to do a Messerschmitt I have, to which I challenged him to do a Japanese subject. He agreed, so I am involved with a 1/32 Hasegawa Bf-109G, Finnish AF, 94 victory ace's Eino Juutilainen's A/C...I'll be BACK!
15 attached images. Click to enlarge.
