I have had these two Hasegawa kits sitting in the build pile for a while, and was looking for a hopefully quick and easy / relaxing build. I wanted something with a low parts count , decent fit, and an easy one color paint job. This one looks like it will fit the bill nicely.
Recently I saw a photo of several AVG "Flying Tiger" pilots standing next to a rudder that was removed from a Ki-27 "Nate" that they shot down near their air base. This was the inspiration for this "out of box" build... I was thinking of building an AVG P-40 (or two) next for the "Year of the Cat" group build, and thought it would be cool to have a "Victor and Vanquished" article with both a pair of AVG P-40's and two Nate's in this article. So far I haven't nailed down the paint scheme on these pair of Ki-27's, but I can tell you that one will be from the 77th Sentai, which is the unit markings shown on the rudder in this picture below, that came from the shot down plane.
In my typical "Gardner Iron Works" assembly line fashion, I have found it easier to build two similar planes at the same time, since they share the same colors.
So I started out by assembling the cockpits for each plane. From the reading I did on line prior to construction, these parts will not be too visible once I get the fuselage halves buttoned up. So I'm not going to go crazy with super detailing anything...
There was the usual research done to determine colors used. My best guess from what I have seen, is that the Imperial Japanese Army made it a policy around 1935-36 to paint the crew portions of the interiors on it's planes in a grayish blue color. This blue gray paint color apparently was used on most IJA planes, including some of the earlier Ki-43 Oscars that were built up until early / mid 1942.
Surviving relics have been checked against color standards, and the closest match is "Gunship Gray", FS 36118.
Another close match is WW2 US Navy "Intermediate Blue". I compared dried examples of both of these colors side by side and they are strikingly similar in appearance.
So this is what I'm going with... gunship gray on the cockpit and fuselage sidewalls.
Just to be safe, I went ahead and glued the fuselage halves together and performed a test fit to see exactly how much of the completed cockpit would be visible once it was glued in position...
and promptly found out that not too much will be seen...
So far the fit has been spot on. There were no gaps on the fuselage haves where they were joined together. This is outstanding, since these kits were originally tooled up by a company called Mania in the early 1970's. Hasegawa purchased the molds and hired a lot of the former employees from the Mania company when they went out of business in the mid 1970's. These kits are occasionally re released by Hasegawa from time to time. You can still find them on line at various sources too. The details are very comparable with current standards.
The next step will be to spray the "Gunship Gray" on the completed cockpits and fuselage sides.
But for now I'm calling it a night... comments are encouraged.
