I am new to the site. While at the hobby store last night I decided to pick up a magazine, and here I am I used to build models as a kid, but then other things get in the way and now I’m an old fart and thinking I’ll get back into it a bit.
I decided to build an early ‘Claude’ as a gift to a Japanese exchange student living with us. We went to see “The Wind Rises” and I want to build an A5M4 for him. I decided on a 1/72 scale so it could better fit into a diorama if I decided to go that route. By the way, this is my last 1/72 airplane I need bigger parts for my fat fingers.
Here’s my question. I know there’s a bit of controversy over the proper colors for the A5Ms. I’ve seen everything from natural metal, to white, to light gray, to gray green. I’m pretty sure I’ve decided on either natural metal or light gray.
1.) If I go metal, is Tamiya AS12 Bare Metal Silver what I want to go with?
2.) If I go light grey there’s AS2 Light Gray, AS16 Light Gray, AS18 Light Gray (IJA), as well as AS11 Light Sea Gray.
So, any ideas, thoughts and opinions are welcome.
Thanks! I look forward to learning a lot from all of you.
Hi and welcome. Don’t sweat the “exactness” as shades varied depending on application methods, weathering etc. Here’s a very informative thread on Claude colors:
Hello and welcome to the forums,I’m no a/c expert for sure,but you might find more answers in the aircraft section or the painting and weathering section.
Welcome! One other place you can check is in the “Group Builds” section, where the “Japanese Group Build III” is on-going. Jgeratic has a nice rendition of the Claude in it. These guys should be able to tell you with a confident “maybe” what colors to use. [:D]
Since you are new here (welcome aboard!), will cut you some slack and try and answer your question here. I had the same question earlier this year, directing it to Nick Millman that runs the Aviation of Japan blog. Here is what he gave me:
“Claude went through several finish evolutions, mainly due to corrosion issues that emerged with its first operations off China during the north-east monsoon of 1937. The first examples were natural metal, then brown and green camouflage was applied briefly in China, then either an anodising film or clear varnish was applied over the natural metal giving a reportedly “gold” effect and finally aluminium pigmented paint was applied overall. It has not been confirmed whether those operational Claude still in service during the Pacific War (after Dec 41) were re-finished in the special paint for light metals applied to the Zero. There are very few photographs of them and not clear enough to tell.”
Thanks to Gary for pointing out my recent build, it can be viewed here:
I used to build models as a kid, but then other things get in the way and now I’m an old fart and thinking I’ll get back into it a bit.