Background

Mitsubishi G4M (Allied code name “Betty”) is probably the best known Japanese twin-engine bomber of World War 2. By their crews called a Cigar, due to her oval shape of fuselage although amongst Allied fighter pilots more popular nicknames were “One-shot lighter” or “Flying Zippo”, as due to the lack of self-sealing fuel tanks. Despite obvious defects G4M became the main twin-engine land based bomber of Imperial Japanese Naval Air Service. The G4M1 was also the most popular version on production lines as it was build in almost 1200examples out of 2400 Bettys produced in all variants.

Instruction and painting options

Painting and decaling instruction is printed on four folded pages of single A3 sheet. Available painting options represents two camouflage variants: dark green/light grey or dark grey/dark brown/light green. All you have to paint are camouflage colours and spinners. All other markings, including individual letters, hinomarus, emblems, stripes or yellow leading edges are provided as decals. Colours of camouflage are given as Federal Standard numbers in the attached tables. In the instruction we will also find drawings for painting and decaling spinners and short list of useful references.

We get the following painting options available in this set:

• ”359” of 700 Kokutai, Rabaul, New Britain, June 1943
  
• ”360” of 705 Kokutai, Rabaul, New Britain, June 1943
  
• ”W2-302” of 752 Kokutai, Kisarazu, Japan 1943
  
• ”W2-365” of 752 Kokutai, Kisarazu, Japan 1943
  
• ”T-313” of Takao Kokutai, Clark Field, Philippines, March/April 1942
  
• ”T-316” of Takao Kokutai, Clark Field, Philippines, March/April 1942

This line-up gives in total six different machines to choose from.

Decal sheet

Decal sheet is in the size of 18x26cm. Printed on shiny paper. As usual in latest Techmod releases carrier film is very thin. It stick close to the outer edges of “colour” what eliminates the risk of silvering when the surface is not prepared properly. You will have to watch out for silvering on the vertical stabilizer where the carrier film cover large are between different diagonal stripes and numbers. If you use decal agents and glossy surface you should have any problems. This set contains also six decals for each propeller: three placards and three tip markings. There are also three placards for fuselage.
Decals are very nicely printed. Carrier film is thin and sticks closely to emblem. Colours are vivid and printed without any screen. I also do not see any misalignment of colours. Each marking and edge is sharp. Emblems are printed as shiny on a shiny paper.

Summary

Techmod release will be a good and easy to use addition to your kit. Thanks to it you can finish your model kit in not so popular individual marking option. It's easy to use, works fine with popular decal agents. What's not to like? Maybe just to few stencils...