Cool Two Seat Zero

[ccheese]

The Flying Heritage Collection's A6M3-22, two seat Zero is finally finished. According to the article in the April/May issue of Warbirds International, lots of research went into the final effect for the Zero. This particular Zero was one of the Russian restored Flight Magic Zero's, and a decision was made to convert it to a two seater. If anyone is interested, I'll post more pic's of the painting of the aircraft.

Charles

 

[Wurger]

She looks more like the standard A6M fighter rather than the A6M2-K. Anyway nice to see her airworthy.

 

[meatloaf109]

Beautiful aircraft!
How authentic is the paint job?

 

[Gnomey]

Cool!

 

[Fight2FlyPhoto]

They did a great deal of research to try and come up with a unique-looking aircraft. According to FHC's website: The FHC Zero has two paint schemes in one. The plane came from the Mitsubishi factory overall "olive green." Near Rabaul, the 251st Kokutai added the plane to its roster. But times were rough in the Pacific for a vulnerable Zero … American fighters and bombers were blasting them, often simply parked on the ground, as fast as they could find them. The Japanese fighter planes were easy to spot covered in that light green color—they stuck out amid the darker green island vegetation.

Orders came down to paint the upper surfaces of the planes a darker green, to make them blend in. Ground crews got to interpret the order any way they saw fit. Some planes received overall sloppy coats of green, streaks, spots, dots, etc. One strain of 251st planes were covered with a striking series of tiger stripes. Our paint scheme was part of that batch.

IMG_7872 by fight2flyphoto, on Flickr

As picky as they are with their previous restorations, I would assume that a lot of work into recreating an actual scheme as accurately as possible. For the new paint scheme on their P-40C I watched Mick Flynn, the person who painted thes hark teeth and "Adam Eve" emblem work with several 1:1 print outs of actual photographs of the original aircraft.

 

[vikingBerserker]

Great info, thanks!

 

[Njaco]

Very cool!

 

[tyrodtom]

I wonder if any camoflauge could have been very effective as long as they had to put those big red suns on them.

 

[Capt. Vick]

Good point!

 

[Fight2FlyPhoto]

I wonder if any camoflauge could have been very effective as long as they had to put those big red suns on them.

Considering everything was only shades of gray back then, I think it would have been OK.

 

[Procrastintor]

Well, SOME things were in muted low resolution colors you know!