WWII JAPAN PILOT UNIFORM COLORS

The Japanese airman and his flight suit

Japanese pilots served in colors that were a long way from American olive. Leather and canvas clothing moved in warm brown tones, green-brown turned up on flight suits, and on a figure the harness reads as a separate material with a color of its own. The four shades in this package are put together so that a modeler can build a figure beside a cockpit without mixing his own blends and without guessing which brown to choose.

The contents are Japanese Uniform Base in the Japanese Brown tone, Japanese Flight Suit Shadow in a dark brown, Japanese Flight Suit Base in green-brown and Japanese Harness in olive green. The bottles hold 17 ml each. The layout follows the build of a figure from the top down: the uniform under the flight suit, the flight suit itself and finally the equipment strapped over it.

The recommended order of application

The area of the flight suit comes first, and only once it has dried is the darker brown let into the folds, well thinned so that it runs on its own where it belongs. The green-brown tone differs only slightly from the brown, so it is a good idea to try both side by side on a piece of plastic first. The olive harness is painted last with a fine brush, and it is precisely the harness that breaks the uniformity of the whole figure.

The green-brown tone of the flight suit is close to the base brown, and that is deliberate: Japanese clothing differed rather in material and degree of wear than in sharp color contrast. That is exactly why it is worth working with thin coats and building the difference between them up gradually rather than in one bold stroke. Faded areas at the elbows and knees can be suggested with a light dry brush.