This little
Japanese plane was actually constructed to be a suicide aircraft. Only 104
of these were built, but none of them went into operational service because the
war ended. It had an open cockpit and detachable landing gear, because returning
to base was not an option.
In January 1945 the
Nakajima factory was ordered to build a simple design suicide aircraft with a
maximum speed of 515km/h (320 mph) and in two months the first prototypes
were made. First flights were disappointing, ground handling handling
was poor. It was also designed to use many Japan's surplus engines that would
otherwise go to waste but all production machines used the 14 cylinder radial
Nakajima 23. Bomb load was as large as 800kg (1764 lb).
Click on
images below to see larger images
Taken everything into
consideration, the kit is really nice. The panel lines and rivets are
beautifully
engraved, although the smaller parts are not so good, and a lot of work has to
be put into them. Eduard also provides photo etch and color photo etch parts in
this Profipack version as well as express masks.
Assembly is fairly easy. There
were some minor problems while attaching the fuselage to the wings, but nothing
serious. Landing gear are a major problem with this kit. They are quite thin and
tend to brake easily. Decals are also nice, and even nicer with a little help
from Micro Sol.
I decided not to do any
weathering on this aircraft, because these planes were planned to have only one
flight, so I really don't see where they could have had the chance to get dirty.
Figures are also from Eduard.
I
can't really tell you about their quality or stuff like that because I'm one of
those airplane modelers who doesn't build figures at all. Instead I find it
better to give them to the armor modelers who will know what to do with them.
Any comments or critiques are
more than welcome.
Goran
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