¹⁄48

Japanese Twins.

A rare sight on expos around Germany and elsewhere are Japanese jets. As I have a few of them in my stash, I decided to build two of them. The kit is the fantastic 1/48 Hasegawa of the Mitsubishi T-2 (two seat trainer) and the Mitsubishi F-1 (single seat fighter). The F-1 was developed out of the T-2 in the late 1960's/early 1970's.

The fitting of the kits are very good, there's no need for filling, just a bit of sanding. The models were built out of the box and not weathered. Both kits consist of about 160 pieces each. For the T-2, I mainly used Revell colours 317 light grey, 330 fiery red, and 25 luminous orange. Black on both models comes from Revell. For the F-1, I used mainly Gunze colours H56 intermediate blue, H319 light green and H320 dark green as this aircraft shows the rare “sea camouflage”. The undersides was painted with light gull grey FS36440 from Agama. For the area around the jet engines, I used gun metal from Agama, as that suits quit well. Final coating was made with satin matt varnish from Marabu. The completed models are really big, as they have the same size of the F-4 Phantom in the same scale!

I used the decals from the kits. The unarmed T-2 was based with 22 Hikotai in Matsushima in the 1980's and the F-1 was a member of the famous 3 Hikotai in Misawa, also in the late 1980's. I think the emblem of this unit, the samurai helmet (“Kabuto”) on the vertical fin is really striking.

Unfortunately these beautiful jets are no longer in service in the JASDF. The last were phased out in 2006 after 35 years on duty. They were replaced by the Mitsubishi F-2A (single seater) and F-2B (two seater), the clone of the F-16.

I have built these two models between October and December 2010. Some of the photos were made at my house of mark58, who manufacture these great bases. The other photos I made in my kitchen during a rainy day. Enjoy my little walkaround.