1:48 Ki-61-I Hien

The only Japanese fighter with a V engine

The Kawasaki Ki-61 was given the name Hien, that is swallow, and among Japanese machines it stood apart. While home designs went in for radial engines, here a licensed version of a German liquid-cooled twelve-cylinder was at work. The slim front end without a frontal radiator confused Allied crews so much that the type was given the code designation Tony after its supposed Italian origin. Higher wing loading took away its agility, but brought speed in a dive and a toughness pilots had not been used to until then.

A canopy that runs on rails

The cockpit is made up of three separate units. At the front stands a fixed windscreen, in the middle a sliding section runs on side rails and at the rear follows a fixed cover with a small side window through which the pilot checked the space behind him. There is a point in posing the sliding part on a model, but until it is masked it cannot be tried in the open position. The set therefore covers all three units separately and the modeler decides only at the gluing stage how he will build the machine.

Contents

• glazing masks for both sides of the parts, the face and the back
• two sheets for spraying the national insignia

Paint applied through a mask settles into one plane with the surrounding camouflage, so the red discs have no edge at all once dry. The film peels off with tweezers after spraying and leaves no matte veil on the clear area, which hand-cut tape does leave behind.