1/72 Hasegawa A6M3 Zero

by Josip Žagar 

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Hello!

This is my latest build.  It is a classic Hasegawa kit, which is still the best choice in this scale.  Unfortunately, like all Hasegawa kits from this series, it suffers from a bare cockpit and mediocre engine detail.  Also, the canopy is only in one piece.  These Hasegawa kits are still unjustly holding a rather high price, although they are getting really eclipsed by newer and cheaper kits from Academy and other manufacturers.  I bought this kit from a dealer on a local German airshow for 10 euros.  It was made in 1992(!) but everything was as it should be and the decals didn't get yellow.

I built it mainly OOB.  The engine received some wiring detail from stretched sprue and the pilot's seat got some lightening holes in the back + seatbelts from Scotch tape.  The fit wasn't perfect and I managed to screw several things - I almost trashed it at 2 occasions but common sense prevailed:-)

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I decided to paint it as a personal airplane of Japan's greatest ace Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, who flew this particular airplane from Rabaul in May 1943.  Airplanes from his unit were originally painted in ordinary light grey (like all Japanese naval fighters) but ground crews in Rabaul modified this camo by hastily applying green squiggles over the upper surfaces.  All later Navy airplanes were properly painted green in factories and received yellow wing recognition stripes, similar to those on RAF fighters.  

In order to simulate the hastily applied original camo pattern in 1:72, I had to use my finest paintbrush and thinned Model Master European green enamel paint. There was no way I could use an airbrush on such a small scale and be faithful to the original.  Basically I painted it in Japanese alphabet-repeatedly ;-) Canopy was also hand painted with the same paintbrush.

 

First reactions from my local modelling crowd were rather puzzled until they saw the photo of the original airplane. Then they were all smiles :-) I hope you'll like it too! 

Josip

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Photos and text © by Josip Žagar