Sunday 1 July 2012

Nichimo 1/70th Ki-61-II Kai


In April I blogged in passing about the old Nichimo 1/70th scale Ki-61-II Kai kit from 1966, showing the box art for it. For those who might never have seen it as a built model regular correspondent Ken Glass kindly sent these images of his own built many years ago and now beginning to show "dry rot in the decals" as he put it! These reveal a pretty good replica for the time with the main issue being the representation of the perforated fairing beneath the rear canopy. The colour scheme is based on a profile in the 1971 Arco-Aircam Aviation Series No.27 monograph on the Ki-61/Ki-100.


Ken did an excellent job of replicating the profile, identified as an aircraft of the 59th Sentai, 1st Chutai at Okinawa in May 1945:-


The kit is sometimes confused with the Fujimi kit of the same era but there is really no comparison between the two in terms of appearance and accuracy. The Revell kit of the Ki-61-I (H-621) appeared in 1963.


Image credits: Model photographs © 2012 Ken Glass; Profile © 1971 Richard Ward/Osprey





3 comments:

noel said...

Hello Nick;
Thank you for posting these pictures, I've always enjoyed seeing what can be accomplished with a vintage kit.
Well Done Mr. Glass! Kind Regards, noel

Dan Salamone said...

That is indeed a great looking model, both the kit, and Ken's work. It's interesting to see the lack of "giant rivets" that the 1/50th scale Tamiya kits from the same era featured. Thanks for sharing!
Dan

Mark Smith said...

I've never seen a model match the art on which it is based any better! Uncanny. Great job, Ken. Let's see more.

Mark Smith