Guadalcanal Diary Part Four - Spotty Zeros

A slightly blurry pic of the A6M3s - 

The first quartet of Planeprinter A6M3 Zeros were in plain grey and painted up quickly enough. Tamiya paint and panel liner, plus the usual canopy. 

The second set of A6M3s I decided to try and copy the hastily applied camouflage they were sometimes seen in. Basically the ground crew were given a tin of green paint and a yard brush and told to get stuck in.  I thought the best way to try and replicate the washed out \ faded look was with either a sponge or cotton bud (Q Tip to our Cousins) over the same Tamiya grey - I went with the cotton bud. I'm not 100% happy with the result but it looks OK to me from "table distance".

Decals are from MiscMinis as usual. They include tail stripes but the pics I found didn't always have them and as the decals are designed to fit Armaments in Miniature models I decided to swerve them - both models are a nominal 1:200 but that doesn't mean they're exactly the same and wrapping decals around the fuselage is not a lot of fun.

Quick history bit.

The A6M3 was an attempt to improve on the superlative A6M2 that was sweeping all before it. the Imperial Japanese Navy may well have been suffering from "Victory Disease" but even they were noticing the Zero had some problems, particularly in a dive where controls rapidly became heavy. They asked Mitsubishi to work on an improved version to address this, and got the A6M3 with a new engine, more ammo for the 20mms and clipped wings which resulted in a (slightly) faster plane with better dive characteristics. It was a case of "be careful what you wish for" because the new Zero was not well received. The new engine was longer than the old one, so to get it in to the already tight A6M fuselage meant some changes, in this case losing some fuel capacity and therefore range. The changes also messed about with the centre of gravity a bit, leading to slightly less impressive handling. These changes hit at exactly the wrong time. The IJN was committing to the Guadalcanal campaign and was using A6M2s to escort G4M1 Bombers from Rabaul to the target at Henderson Field and the ships around Guadalcanal. This was a gruelling trip for the fighters, sometimes five hours each way, but the phenomenal range of the A6M2 made it possible, even though the pilots must have been tired even before they reached the target area. The new A6M3 just didn't have the range of the A6M2 so could not  escort the bombers all the way. To counter this, and make the trip less gruelling the Japanese establishing bases closer to the island such as at Buin on Bougainville Island. Operating from here, the A6M3s could cover the cover the bombers, and it would also provide a useful staging post for damaged aircraft on the return trip. Sadly this was also within range of the Cactus Airforce operating from Henderson Field, and the bases were regularly pounded both during construction and operations, leading to high attrition rates for the fighters based there. The IJN was forced to commit scarce fighter strength to defend airfields that were only there to allow fighters to operate further forward, putting their already limited numbers of fighters under even more strain. Guadalcanal was exactly the wrong battle for the Japanese, who were looking for a knock out blow, but found themselves in a meat grinder battle of attrition they could not win.