1:32 Ki-84 Hayate

The Hayate over the China front

The Nakajima Ki-84 was the last Japanese army fighter to reach the war in any number. A test unit flew it from the autumn of 1943 and the first combat deployment came in the spring and summer of 1944 over China, where the aircraft escorted bombers and attacked the airfields of the Fourteenth Air Force (USAAF). The Homare engine gave the fighter performance that older types did not have, but the quality of the fuel and of the hydraulics undermined its service.

Early aircraft of the China front wore a restrained finish: dark green mottling or a solid coat on the upper surfaces, a light gray-green underside and, against them, sharply contrasting red discs. The yellow recognition strips on the wing leading edges, introduced by the Japanese Army Air Force in 1942, belong with them. The three insignia masks match the number of discs this variant carried on the fuselage and on the upper wing surface.

Box contents

• Film for the canopy from the outside and the inside, two parts
• Three masks for the red discs of the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force
• The cutouts match 1:32 scale
• The box contains neither plastic parts nor paints

Before the film goes on, the glazing is wiped with alcohol and left to dry completely. For the discs it is recommended to spray a white base first and only then the red, because red otherwise shows through over dark green camouflage. The film is lifted before the paint has fully cured, which keeps the edge sharp.

The set does not replace a drawing of the scheme, so it pays to have reference for the particular unit at hand. The placement of the discs varied between aircraft of this type according to the production batch and to when the machine passed through a repair shop.