Hasegawa 1/72 Nakajima Ki-43 Oscar

HASEGAWA 1:72 NAKAJIMA KI-43 OSCAR

Reviewer: Jon Hudak (contact via SMAKR webmaster)
Kit Review submitted: 13 May 2009

History:

To quote from the kit instructions.... " The Hayabusa (Oscar) Army Type 1 Fighter was used during the whole Pacific War as the main Army fighter. Its second model had the engine of the first model replaced in favor of the high horsepower Ha 115 engine. A triple propeller instead of a double one and a shorter wing span gave it a greatly increased speed. It fought on the Burma, Philippines and China fronts but it found itself outplayed by the superior speed and armament of the American fighters." Well that sums it up somewhat quickly for the average person and states some basic facts. I don't intend to go into a full blown history here but will comment on a few points and make mention of a few others.

One thing that is quite amazing about the Hayabusa is its continual service throughout the entirety of WW2. As the all too familiar story goes, when it first debuted there was basically nothing else like it other than perhaps the Imperial Japanese Navys A6M Zero. It easily outclassed its early war Allied contemporaries such as the Buffalo, P40 and Hurricane. Until the Allies developed better fighting tactics such as diving from higher altitude with speed, hit and run passes and not trying to dogfight with it an Allied pilot in the early part of the Pacific War could find himself in a whole lot of trouble if he underestimated the Oscar (as it became known to Allied pilots). Eventually with improved types of fighter planes at the hands of the Allies like the P38 Lightning, Hellcat and Corsair the Hayabusa found itself more often the vanquished then the victor. Much like its IJN counterpart the A6M Zero, the Hayabusas lack of armor plate and limited firepower for the sacrifice of speed, range and maneuverability would come back to haunt it. Under a burst or two of well placed machine gun fire from 4 to 6 .50 caliber guns they could easily disintegrate and explode in a ball of flame.

The Hayabusa would become one of the most numerically important fighters in the Japanese Army Air Force since it would stay in production from the beginning of the war until the end in 1945 given Japans dire situation for lack of a suitable replacement and in sufficient enough numbers. One of its would be successors the inline engine Kawasaki Ki-61 Hien though faster and better armed than the Ki-43 was less reliable and more temperamental since it was not suited to the hot and humid tropical environment of the Pacific due to the problems with its inline engine which overheated often. While the Ki-84 Hayate (Frank) was a more than worthy successor and an improvement of the type it often suffered from poor build quality due to unskilled labor and insufficient numbers. Reasons like this were why the Hayabusa had to stay in production. Numerous improvements and upgrades would be made but in the end it simply couldn't keep up with its ever evolving opposition. Still many a JAAF ace scored most of their kills in the type and it was well liked by its pilots. To say that it fought valiantly until the end and could still manage to shoot down American types as the P47, P51 and even the B24 Liberator bomber is quite an undertaking especially with only two machine guns!

The Kit:

I'd be surprised if there was still a modeler who hasn't seen this kit up close at a shop or show at least once in their lives, but you never know. Hasegawas kit of the classic Hayabusa is one that's been around for the better part of probably close to 30 years. For its type its about the only game in town of this variant. LS made one quite some time ago and offered it in two different versions, an early one with a two bladed prop and one with a 3 bladed prop but that's another story and let's not get off course here. Visible differences between a Type -1 and a Type -2 are that the -2 had a repositioned oil cooler under the cowling that is set farther back as well as a three bladed prop since the -1 only had a 2 bladed prop. These are two of the most recognizable differences but if you look close you will see that the -2 had more squared off wing tips whereas the -1 had more elliptical ones not unlike the Zero. The covers over the machine guns are more pronounced on the -1 and have a sort of squared off look to them as well whereas the ones on the -2 are more rounded.

Anyway getting back to the kit, (depending on the vintage) you get two sprues of light gray plastic containing 39 pieces which includes the 1 piece clear canopy. Though it has raised panel lines it is still nice and has enough of a number of parts to make it a comprehensive kit for most tastes. If you look long enough and perhaps appreciate the type you will notice some nice details. Details such as the indentations on the seat back rest, raised detail on the wheel covers, the molded on tail wheel (to a fuselage half) and navigations lights on the upper and lower outer wing tips are well rendered to name a few. For as long as it has been around I am surprised to see that the moldings still look nice even in more recent issues.

Two styles of exhaust pipe ends are given depending on which version you want to build. I think this is incorrect as part A19 are more of the style used on the earlier Type 1 models whereas part A20 (the flat style) are what were used on the Type 2 and would be correct for this kit regardless of markings options.

Decals/markings:

With the old original kit you are given two options, one from the 50th Hiko Sentai flown by Sgt. Satoshi Anabuki from 1943 as depicted so beautifully on the exciting box art in its typical heavily weathered, ratty-tat camouflage scheme making a pass over a B25. The other is one from the infamous 64th Sentai. Both schemes are a dark green over light gray.

Construction:

Construction began with painting first rather than assembling some pieces together. Originally I had painted the interior parts and insides of the fuselage halves a few years back while working on a Grumman Wildcat. This was done with Gunze H58 Interior Green as I figured it was close enough for my tastes at the time and besides why not use up some extra paint right? When I finally did get around to this kit I started with the cockpit and glued the interior pieces all together. This consists of a floor, two piece seat and a control column. A confusing issue arose here next. I could have sworn that you were given two extra pieces that are supposed to be added to the seat back though no mention of it is made in the instructions. Newer releases of this kit feature these parts added on and even the instructions from my original release show them as part of the seat back. (Could I have cut them off accidentally or were they never mounted and you were supposed to add them on?) Anyway without them what this did was to make the seat back much shorter than it should have been. I didn't notice this until it was too late so left it as it was. At the same time the wings were glued together and a dry fit beforehand showed that they fit nicely to the taped up fuselage.

The engine assembly was glued together and painted flat black and rubbed over a bit with a silver pencil. Since the decals were pretty old looking I brushed a coat of liquid decal film over the one for the instrument panel just to be safe. Then, it, the cockpit tub and engine assembly were glued to a fuselage half taking care to make sure everything would line up properly before gluing the fuselage halves together. A couple of days later the cowling section was glued on along with the wing assembly. So far so good. The horizontal stabilizers were added next and then it was just the usual amount of filler and sanding. Once this was shaping up I added the little oil cooler scoop under the cowling and faired it in with some filler. I had a hard time with the areas on the bottom surfaces of the wings where the wintgtip from the upper halves wrap around and meet up with the ends of the lower wing pieces. (if that makes sense! a feature found on some of the older Hasegawa kits, but hey at least it gives you a nice thin trailing edge since the flaps are all one piece and molded on with the upper wings) Eventually things were looking pretty good and the model with its cockpit and inside of the engine cowling masked off was now ready for paint!

Painting and salt technique:

I knew from the beginning that I wanted to try and portray a weather beaten, chipped finish so for me the salt technique was the only way to go. After giving the airframe a good wet sanding with my polishing cloth set (ranging from 3,200-12,000 grit) I misted on a a coat of silver leaf with a Tamiya spray can. Then from there following some advice from a friend or two I dabbed on some water with a paint brush in various places over most of the entire airframe. (see photo) I used regular table salt and merely sprinkled it on over the wet areas letting it dry overnight. Care has to be taken when handling the airframe afterwards so as not to knock off any of the salt clumps.

With the salt clumps more than dry and in place I sprayed on some flat white enamel on the landing gear doors and leading edges of the wings as a base coat for the yellow i.d. bands. This was followed with some Russian Marker Yellow and when this was dry the i.d. bands and gear doors were masked off. For the bottom of the airframe (and main gear doors) I used Imperial Japanese Light Army Gray. All these colors were from the Model Master Enamel range and this is probably one of the first WW2 Japanese aircraft I've built that I used enamels on. More masking ensued and now the top of the airframe was ready for its color. For this I used White Ensign Models Nakajima Army Green (# WEMCC IJN05). I was looking forward to trying out some of these colors having bought them a few years ago at the IPMS USA Nationals. No problems were encountered and I thinned it with lacquer thinner like I do with all of my enamels.

With things going fairly well the area forward of the cowling was masked off and the anti-glare panel was sprayed with some flat black. In the meantime the canopy was masked off and painted too. Normally I do this ahead of time and attach it before painting, this time I did not. With all of the major painting done, the masking tape from underneath was removed and the model received a good coating of Testors Glosscote (large square bottle). I had decided before painting to use some decals from a newer boxing of the same kit featuring some colorful markings from the 59th flight regiment. This was undoubtedly a flight or squadron leaders plane with all the fuselage bands and such. Anyway it appealed to me so I went ahead and used them.

Markings and final bits:

The decals for the most part went down well with Micro Set though the tail band one was a bit uncooperative at times as well as trying to line up the ones on the tail. I pretty much refused to use Micro Sol given its nasty tendencies with Hasegawa decals. Since there were no real areas that could be highlighted with a wash, I skipped the usual coat of gloss over the decals and went straight to the Testors Dullcote, again using the stuff in the large square bottle. Unfortunately the large fuselage band decal silvered terribly and it was hard to get the ends of the decal stripes for the vertical tail to come around the front of it and meet together without tearing or peeling. Time to break out the red paint and play touch-up! The fiddly bits came next and items such as the landing gear were glued on. These were previously painted silver with black rubber boots. For the wheels I used the IJA Gray for the rims and Testors Rubber for all the wheels. The wheel wells received a coat of aluminum followed by a home brewed mix of Aotake that was made from several parts each of Tamiya clear blue and green.

Surprisingly the little exhaust manifold outlet pipes were hard to fit and had to be whittled down quite a bit in order to get them to fit into the cowling. I ended up trashing at least one of them and raided another one of these same kits for the part. (Always good to have some doubles or triples of the same kit eh?)For these I used some Floquil Roof Brown which is a railroad color. The back and sides of the head rest and decking area behind the cockpit were painted with some of the interior green color. The face of the head rest was painted with a brown or leather color and the spinner was sprayed with some flat white. The front two thirds of it were masked off and the rest of it and the propeller were painted using some Tamiya XF-64 Red Brown.

Lastly the head rest and canopy were glued in place as was the antenna mast. The wing tip lights were painted Model Master Chrome Silver followed up with Tamiya clear red for the port wing and some blue green for the right one since most Japanese WW2 aircraft used this rather than an ordinary blue or green. I left the light on the left side of the tail in silver as some photos show it to be a clear color. Some Model Master Steel was used for the pitot tube tip while I was at it and in the home stretch. For the time being I decided to leave off the drop tanks from under the wings. They could always be added at some point,maybe some day they will be. The propeller was slid onto the shaft and the spinner glued into place and with that the model was now complete. I did a little weathering and some additional chipping with a silver pencil and now at last it was finally finished.

Conclusion:

Though the results of using the salt technique didn't come out as good as I would have liked, some areas of it I was very pleased with, especially near the left wing root. Besides you can't expect your first try with something like this to come out exactly how you'd envisioned. Here practice makes perfect and I'm sure that one or two more models down the road my technique will probably improve significantly. as far as building this kit, it proved to be a rather easy and straightforward build of another old classic from Hasegawa. For a kit of its age it still looks every bit the part and appears to be pretty accurate in shape and profile. If you're not bothered by the raised panel lines then I say go for it. If an older kit like this isn't your thing and you want something more up to date then go with one of the Fujimi ones which feature nice recessed panel lines and is a more recent kit. Remember the Fujimi kit is also a Type 1 so it depends on what you're looking for. Other than that I can certainly recommend this kit.

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