The Little World

The Revell Mitsubishi Zero has been completed. It is one of those models that can be built to the standard of the kit but no further. If you look at inconvenient portions of it you can see right through it. But if you look at it from a distance, all is well.

The Langley reference in the title is from a series of photographs taken of the Akutan plane after it had passed through the Navy’s hands on the west coast. They left it pretty bare, but the boffins on the east coast too the Japanese pitot tube off the port wing and added a longer and more accurate measuring probe on the starboard one. Blue overall, insignia painted over the hinomara and no unit or airframe numbers visible. Secrecy of a sort.

The basic Revell kit is surprisingly easy to get right and the landing gear is actually well-fitted. Still reinforced with PVA, though.

The real Akutan Zero did not survive the war – an out-of-control Helldiver hit it while taxiing and the SB2C’s big propellor chopped the fragile Mitsubishi to bits. But it had served the purpose of research and combat development by then. My example is a museum reproduction.