Dirk's Nakajima B5N2 - 'Kate'

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Dirk's Nakajima B5N2 - 'Kate'

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

User Name:Dirkpitt289
First Name:Dirk
manufacture:Hasegawa
Scale:1/72
Model Type:Nakajima B5N2 - 'Kate'
After Market Items:None at the moment

I've been looking forward to this group build for some time now. Mostly because of a recent increased interest in the PTO and partly because I've never built a Japanese aircraft before. For this build I chose to build the Nakajima B5N2 Torpedo bomber

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History of the Nakajima B5N2 Kate

TheNakajima B5N - Allied reporting-name 'Kate' - was the sole shipboard torpedo-bomber of the Japanese Navy at the start of the Pacific War. It was by then quite old, having been designed to meet a specification of 1935, and was already judged to be obsolescent. However, when first put into production it had been a very advanced aircraft, and in war it out-performed any Allied shipborne torpedo-plane until the arrival of the Grumman Avenger in mid-1942. In particular it was greatly superior to the Douglas TBD Devastator.

B5N Kates played an important part of the attack on the US Navy positions at Pearl Harbor which ultimately led the United States to come forcefully into the war. About 144 or B5N Kates were used in that very attack. It can be held accountable for the sinking of several other Allied vessels in the Pacific which included the USS Hornet, USS Lexington and the USS Yorktown. More than 1,150 B5Ns were produced in the form of B5N1 and B5N2 variants. The BFN proved to be one of the best aircraft designed for torpedo bombing duty of the war.

Altogether, around 1,150 were built; however, not a single complete example survived. A large portion of a B5N2 was recovered from the Kuril Islands by a British private collector in 2003. Replicas of the B5N2s were made from U.S. BT-13 Valiant training aircraft, which were modified to represent Japanese aircraft for the movie Tora! Tora! Tora!, and have been used in a number of movies and airshows since to depict the aircraft.

An original Kate is parked at the New Cumberland Airport, in New Cumberland PA.

General characteristics
Crew: 3 (1 pilot, 1 commander and 1 backgunner/radio operator)
Length: 10.30 m (33 ft 9½ in)
Wingspan: 15.52 m (50 ft 11 in)
Height: 3.70 m (12 ft 1⅝ in)
Wing area: 37.7 m² (406 ft²)
Empty weight: 2,279 kg (5,024 lb)
Loaded weight: 3,800 kg (8,380 lb)
Max takeoff weight: 4,100 kg (9,040 lb)
Powerplant: 1 × Nakajima Sakae 11 radial engine, 750 kW (1,000 hp)
Performance
Maximum speed: 378 km/h (204 kn, 235 mph)
Range: 1,992 km (1,075 NM, 1,237 mi)
Service ceiling: 8,260 m (27,100 ft)
Rate of climb: 6.5 m/s (1,283 ft/min)
Wing loading: 101 kg/m² (21 lb/ft²)
Power/mass: 0.20 kW/kg (0.12 hp/lb)
Armament
Guns: 1 × 7.7 mm Type 92 machine gun 'Ru' (Lewis) in rear dorsal position, fed by hand loaded drum magazines of 97 rounds. A number of B5N1s were equipped with 2 × 7.7 Type 97 machine guns in the wings.
Bombs: 1 × 800 kg (1,760 lb) type 91 torpedo or 1x 800kg (1,760lb) bomb or 2 × 250 kg (550 lb) bombs or 6 × 60 kg (293 lb) bombs[4]

The Kit

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This is one of the Mania kits that Hasegawa purchased in the early 1980's. It has fine engraved details, boxed in wheel wells, a nice interior, detailed engine, and some interior sidewall details. Not bad for a kit designed in the early 1970s.

It does suffer from some poor ejector pin placement, notably right in the middle of the seat. There is also some minor flash, but nothing major at all. This particular kit was purchased in 1984. It is still in the catalogue, albeit with different box art and undoubtedly different decals from this version. There is a clear but distorted canopy.

The instruction sheet is a fold out that has the history and paint/decal guide on one side and the construction sequence on the other. There are six steps, each showing the parts and giving color call-outs. Unfortunately, everything is in Japanese since this isn't an export kit.

Overall, it looks like it will be a nice kit to build and one that should not take that long to complete. Not sure what is available in aftermarket stuff for this kit, but built right from the box it should be a very nice presentation.

Again I have never built a Meatball and know less then nothing about them so the plan is for a straight forward oob build using the kits decals. Of course as you all know that as builders that could change at any time. 8-)

Thanks for taking the time to look at my project.
.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

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Dirkpitt289
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Re: Dirk's Nakajima B5N2 - 'Kate'

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

Here is something that might help inspire...

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.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

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Re: Dirk's Nakajima B5N2 - 'Kate'

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

After a quick search of the Internet I found this. I think this is going to be the aircraft I'm going to depict in this build. ;-)

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Flown by 1st wave Air Strike Leader Lt. Cdr. Mitsuo Fuchida, commander-in-chief/coordinator of all IJNAF formations deployed at Pearl Harbour on Dec. 7th, 1941. Fuchida was the pilot who radioed back the historical code message "Tora, tora, tora!" to let Vice Admiral Nagumo know total surprise had been achieved at Pearl.

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As silly as this may sound I'm not sure of the color of this aircraft. Is it the light gray we are use to seeing Japanese aircraft minue the black/ blue nose or is it NMF? Can anyone help a guy out with this question?
.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

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Re: Dirk's Nakajima B5N2 - 'Kate'

Post by jssel »

Try here for AI-301 Fuchida's Kate

http://www.j-aircraft.com/gallery/navy/b5n_gallery.html;

I have seen several references to this scheme.
Besting 60 years of mediocre building of average kits in the stand off scale
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Re: Dirk's Nakajima B5N2 - 'Kate'

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

Thanks for that Jeff. It helps confirm what bits and pieces I'm finding.

It seems the true color of this aircraft is as much a debated topic as the captured Daimler Benz Messer-Spit of the ETO. The color profile I post of a NMF B5N2 is in fact Fuchida's aircraft but most likely before Pearl harbour during the Training phase. From what I can tell the Dark green was applied to the upper surfaces of Fuchida's Kate sometime in late October or early November. Possibly in transit to Perl Harbor. Reports are that Akagi's Kates were painted overall in grey-green then over painted on the upper surfaces in dark green... it is possible that fuchida's aircraft retained the natural metal lower surfaces but this is debatable.

The photo below is a still from a film of AI-301 landing on Akagi in April 1942 that was found at the National Archives by Koku-Fan, a Japanese magazine. On viewing stills printed in the magazine, Japanese researcher M. Asano determined that AI-301 had a "pre-war" red tail which had received the yellow command markings.

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Pilot: Lt. Mitsuo Matsuzaki, Observer: Lt. Cmdr. Mitsuo Fuchida and Gunner/radioman: PO1c Tokunobu Mizuki.

The film of AI-301 landing in April 1942 reveals that salt water does prevent good adhesion of paint as the aircraft's surfaces are peeling paint. Note the aircraft still has a red tail left over from China. So the markings at select stages may be determined like peeling away layers of an onion. The B5N2 AI-301 had a pre-war scheme of natural metal with red tail that had three yellow command stripes and a red vertical "carrier" stripe.

The plane was painted, "en route to Hawaii" with SEMI-GLOSS green upper surface camouflage. If you compare the flaking chips on the top and sides of the fuselage to the underside of the aircraft they don't seem to match. That would suggest that the lower surfaces were also painted. Most likely light gray.

So it looks like this is the look I will be going for with my build. Should be easy enough but I think I will have an issue with the "AI-301" on the tail.

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.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

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Re: Dirk's Nakajima B5N2 - 'Kate'

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

Well we are underway for this gb, but as fate would have it I had to go away for business for a few days to Atlantic City. I won't be able to start my build till the weekend. In the mean time I'll be watching all the other builds
.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

My Youtube Channel
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Re: Dirk's Nakajima B5N2 - 'Kate'

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

Sorry brews I didn't mean to delete your message. A blackberry isn't the greatest for interacting on the web. It seems I hit the edit button instead of the reply
.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

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Re: Dirk's Nakajima B5N2 - 'Kate'

Post by Dazzled »

Hi Dirk
When I was building my model of Akagi, I did extensive research into the colours of her aircraft and all her Kates were, indeed green. I used Tamiya XF-11 J.N. Green.
COLD WAR S.I.G. LEADER

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Re: Dirk's Nakajima B5N2 - 'Kate'

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

Last night I made some time to start my Kate. They say the first impression is long lasting. If so I'm in trouble.

Flash flash flash, everywhere you look is flash.

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I had no idea that the Kate had a built in toilet for the pilot. :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

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The Decals

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These sink holes are rather ugly and I was planning to fill them but then I realized what we all know deep in the back of our head and that is NO ONE will ever see them so why bother. Lame? yes but as usual I'm already behind the eight ball on this project.

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Most of the seasoned modelers I speak to usually laugh at me when I talk about colors. Like when I say I have to run out and get some RAF interior green for my Hurricane. Those guys all make their own colors and seeing as how I can't find and INJ interior color I will have to follow in their foot steps. IMHO their interiors are very close in color to the US interiors but not quite. Using interior green, some white, yellow and brown I con cocked my own color. I'm sure those rivit counters out there will cry foul but I don't really care.

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.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

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Re: Dirk's Nakajima B5N2 - 'Kate'

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

Thanks Brews

I've seen a few color photos where it actually was even darker. Like you said its a hard one to nail down
.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

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Re: Dirk's Nakajima B5N2 - 'Kate'

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

Brews wrote:
As an alternative to decal sheet, you might want to get this set:

http://www.internetmodeler.com/2001/sep ... harbor.htm;

and if you do, I'll have the bomb! :)
As it happens I will not need these as the kit has all the decals I need. SWEET!!!! :mrgreen:
.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

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Re: Dirk's Nakajima B5N2 - 'Kate'

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

Brews wrote:It seems that you have all of the decals you need, Dirk. Just paint the tail red :)
Sure makes things easier 8-)
.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

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Re: Dirk's Nakajima B5N2 - 'Kate'

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

Last night I put the final touches on the Kate cockpit. I got a late start and feel that if I was to decide to go crazy I would suffer in the end and possably miss the deadline. Oh and I just didn't feel like it... :ha:

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Fuselage buttoned up

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Thanks for looking
.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

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Re: Dirk's Nakajima B5N2 - 'Kate'

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

I honestly didn't think it was that bad either. Its that reason that allowed me to let it go and move on. (Without trying to get into hot water) I'm not sure I would have felt the same way if this was an Airfix kit. ;-)
.... Dirk

Beware of the DOG's of WAR

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Re: Dirk's Nakajima B5N2 - 'Kate'

Post by Molly-new »

Looking very smart so far.
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