Saturday 3 July 2021

Dennis McCone's 1/32 Shiden-kai


With this splendid Shiden-kai built from the 1/32 Hasegawa kit Dennis McCone has completed and kindly shared here an impressive trio of large scale Japanese aircraft including his very fine Frank in 2019 and resplendent  Raiden in 2020.

Describing Hasegawa's N1K2-J as a finely engineered and easy to build kit which was a pleasure to work on, Dennis constructed it mainly from the box with the exception of the RB Productions fantastic but difficult to assemble seat belts and Montex masks for painting on the markings instead of applying decals. The masks had Dennis scratching his head a few times to work out the correct order for applying paint.

As usual Dennis applied all enamel paints to the model - Humbrol for the details with Xtracolor and Sovereign Colourcoats for the main finish and painted markings.   

Dennis' model represents an aircraft of the redoubtable Hikotai 301 Shinsen-Gumi of 343 Ku as flown by several notable pilots including CPO Shoichi Sugita, Lt Masaji Matsumura and Lt Naoshi Kanno the Hikotai commander when his own personal aircraft 343-15 was undergoing maintenance. The victory markings were said to be applied as a morale boosting exercise.    

With very special thanks to Dennis for sharing these images of a superb model and for his patience in waiting for them to appear here.  

Image credit: All © 2021 Dennis McCone

7 comments:

WD said...

Splendid!

Warren

Michael Thurow said...

What a great collection of large-scale models, and a nice comparison of late-war planes. The application of camouflage and markings looks superb. Thanks giving us this inspiration.

Ken Glass said...

Very nice work, Dennis. Thanks for sharing, Dennis & Nick.

Unknown said...

Super clean build expertly done!

Very nice display as well

Thanks to both Dennis & Nick

Kevin Bade said...

I really enjoyed seeing your big George Dennis. Very well done. Although I stricly build 1/72 I have always admired 1/32 aircraft and own a bunch I've never built mostly because I'm not brave enough. No margin for error in the big scales! Someday......anyhow kudos on a awesome build.:)
Love the kill markings.

WK said...

Nicely done.

Spitfire said...

Late as usual, but thank you all for the kind words, I enjoyed my foray into Japanese aviation greatly and will revisit the subject in the future