Guys, had to get this up before Femis finishes his. After all I’ve been working three months - he’s been working three weeks and his Judy still looks better than mine! [:(]
Anyway, this is the 1/48 Finemolds kit of the D4Y1 version. The Suisei or Comet was a dive bomber that came into use by the Imperial Japanese Navy in the spring of 1942. A fast aircraft the Judy was one of the few Japanese aircraft powered by an in-line engine- a license build German Daimler Benz 601A. An internal bomb bay added to the plane’s streamlining. The Japanese Navy was not experienced with in-line engines and this caused maintenance problems giving the aircraft a reputation for unreliability. The later D4Y3 version was fitted with a radial engine instead.
Designed before the war started these aircraft were built with the Japanese concept of all-out offense and nothing spent on defense - that is no armour or self-sealing fuel tanks. As one wag put it most of these aircraft met a comet like end- falling into the ocean with a long comet like tail of flame behind them. I didn’t weather this aircraft much since most were either quickly shot down or sent on one-way suicide missions.
I had some problems with the canopy masking- I thinking of replacing it sometime in the future with an aftermarket one like Femis.
Very nice…I see you built the in-line version which used a copy of the German db601 engine (the kind in the 109)…That pilot seat is interesting…either it was made to accept a back-parachute pack or it was made for the pilot to sit on that top level during taxiing on the ground or both…Looks like the bomb bay doors retracted into the fues???
I’ve been looking for this version to buy but all to be found is the radial version…
Manny: I haven’t seen any photos one way or the other but yeah I’d assume from the design of the seat that the chute provided the back cushion there. And the bomb bay doors do slide up into the fuselage. It took me a few tries to figure this out - I kept trying to put them on the bottom. A very neat elegant design. I like the lines of the in-line plane more than the radial, just a sleek looking plane.
There is a night fighter version too with the in-line engine, with white metal parts for a ‘jazz music’ gun mounted at a 45% angle to fire up into the belly of Allied bombers. You can leave off the night fighter parts and build it as a dive bomber if you find that kit. Funny it tells you to install the bomb in that version which seems an odd thing to carry to hunt B-24s.
Night fighter top, bottom is the version Femis is building.
Actually, that bottom one is the kamikazee version w/ the extra-large bomb and rocket pack on the bottom-rear of the fues…not sure if these actually made it into production or were used in combat but it looks cool…
Looks good my man![Y] I aint too far behindjya[t$t]
However…don’t forget to paint your pitot tube…and the nav. lights are backwards. Easy way to remember those is “red-right-wrong”… or associating “red” is a shorter word than “green” as “left” is a shorter word than “right”…“green”, and “right” are both 5 letters.
Femis: Backwards? Ahhh krap, bet I had the model upside down when I started painting them- leading me to reverse them. Oh, bother at least it’s easy to fix. Hmmmm, I did paint the pitot tube aluminum, I’ll go back and check it too. Thanks for catching my bloopers!
