Sanzao Dao Island, South East China, 1938. During the Japanese invasion of China, the 14th Naval Air Group operated the new B5N1 bomber from captured Chinese territories.
The Kate is part of the recent VS17 collection from F-Toys, which also included USN Devistators.
Perhaps unsurprisingly since these kits are aimed at a Japanese domestic market, you won't find any Chinese War markings in their range, especially not for this particular type - the 14th Air Group operated out of an airfield on a Southern Chinese island built by slave labour and whose construction led to thousands of deaths among the workers and local Chinese population, something still taboo to discuss in Japan.
The fit of the Gashapon kits is never seamless, so I will be making this up in a normal kit fashion with filler, then completely repainting. I would probably have masked the yellow wing fronts to keep these, but the scheme I am making doesn't apparently have them.
A little detail to enhance the cockpit.
Some light filler around the wing root.
The underside being prepainted grey, was easy to turn metallic with a little dry brushing.
After carefully following the camouflage pattern from the 1/72 Airfix kit instructions, decals were added - the numbers sourced from the stash.
To reflect the harsh work environment of these aircraft based a long way from their maintenence, I added a dusty panel line wash.
Like almost every 144th kit, the canopy is a moulded single piece design - but almost every photo of the type shows the canopies open. So I took a razor saw to the clear plastic and with a little fiddling, managed to create a reasonable attempt at an open pilot's canopy.
Finally it was just a case of putting together a vignette base.
I used figures from an IJN flight crew set from Amazon Japan, while the fuelling cart is from a Japanese card cart kit. Its a purely fictional affair as no reference photos were available.
