1/48 Hasegawa C6N1 Saiun (Myrt)

by Tony Feredo

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Its been quite a while since I finished a kit, so here is the latest addition to my Philippine based WWII aircraft collection.  This is a 1/48 Hasegawa Nakajima C6N1 Saiun (Myrt) that I built out of the box.  Building this kit was fun and straight forward.  The parts were flash free and fit well.  I applied no putty at all except for a few drops of Mr. Surfacer 500 in small gaps in the wings.  The kit comes with an open or closed canopy option.  I opted to use the closed position as it was easier for me to mask the large single middle section.  The interior detail is good and I just added seatbelts made from masking tape and wires for the buckles.  I painted the interior with my own mix of Nakajima Interior Green.

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In preparation for the painting, I pre-shaded the panel lines with Tamiya semi gloss black.  After I painted the grey green fabric covered areas in the ailerons and elevators.  After they were masked, I spray painted the undersides with Gunze Mr. Color Silver (#8).  Although the instruction called for an IJN Light Grey undersides, the subject wherein I based my model had a NMF underside based on photographs.  For the upper camo, I misted the model with Mr.Color IJN Dark Green (#15) and applied several light coats of Mr. Color Nakajima Dark Green (#129) to get as close as possible to the Nakajima Dark Green color.  The cowling area was a combination of Tamiya Semi Gloss Black and Mr.Color 125 (Cowling Color).  I applied a thin black wash and once it was dry, I painted the fuel caps with red.  Then I weathered the model using a fine brush and Tamiya X-11 and then applied exhaust stains by using an airbrush.  For the kit decals, I went to my spares for the tail numbers, although the kits supplied the same numbers but in white, I chose yellow because the subject in which I based my kit had yellow tail markings in real life.  I used stretched sprue for the aerials.

The model depicts a C6N1 Myrt with the 762nd Kokutai, Imperial Japanese Navy when it was based in the Philippines during WWII.  Although primarily the 762nd Ku was stationed at the Clark Field, this particular Myrt (762-03) was found in bad shape together with several derelict Japanese aircraft on January 1945 at Bamban Airfield, Tarlac, a few miles from the Clark - Mabalacat airfield complex.  I decided to build the plane on how it looked like when it patrolled the skies over the Philippines during the war.

Cheers,

Tony

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Photos and text © by Tony Feredo