Japanese Type 95 Ha Go

[Tim Coulson]

Don't know if you have seen these Darren. I hope that they might be of use to you. I have been watching World War 2 The Unseen Films online today and saw footage of a destroyed Type 95. Below are some screen grabs, sorry about the quality.





Tim

[Darren Gawle]

Thank You!

I've decided to do a Peleliu Type 95 (14th Division tank company), which is what the vehicle you've posted is. My main concern was that as yet I hadn't seen any evidence that there was any khaki/parched grass colour of these vehicles (indeed, same concern goes for the Biak Type 95 in the colour shot the late Dave Harper included with his Japanese colours article in Military Modelling 23/4 a few years ago). But now I can safely say that there is the third colour.

Thanks again!

Plus - just read that DML's Japanese kit will be a Type 2 Ka Mi amphibious. Tasty.

[Tim Coulson]

You're welcome, glad to be of assistance.

Here is another screen grab, from Guadalcanal (if I remember correctly.)



Tim

[Darren Gawle]

Please pardon the delay, but it wasn't quite 90% done yet. But it's ready for paint now:






Still working on the ModelKasten tracks, which are just proceeding slowly. The running gear is complete as well, but in parts for painting (hence why they're not pictured here)

DG

[Jamie Tainton]

Hi Darren,
Any chance of seeing the tracks and how they go together?

[Darren Gawle]

If you go back Andrei's post from October 13 on this thread he's posted shots of the assembly process. The process is not difficult, but it is time-consuming, and as the end connectors are hollow on these tracks I will have to give each a shot of CS and then drill each on out, slightly. Essentially it's taken me the better part of a week to do one run. But then again, I've never been the fastest modeller in the world.

DG

[Darren Gawle]

I know I haven't updated in a while, and I won't have any in-progress photos this time, but I've started painting after getting my head around the chaos that is Japanese armour colours during WW2.

As far as research material goes, I only have four sources:

1. The AJ Press book I already mentioned by Markowski and Tomczyk
2. Steve Zaloga's title for Concord on tank battles of the Pacific
3. An article by the late Dave Harper from Military Modelling Vol.23, No.4 on Japanese colours
4. A posting on Missing Links by Akira Takizawa after an article written by Kunihiro Suzuki (http://www.network54.com/Forum/47207/me ... olor+match)

Taki's re-post of the Suzuki article seems to match most closely what I can see in period colour and B&W photos (in my opinion), but the gist of the subject is common to all four essays. There were five colours in use by the Imperial Japanese Army at the start of the war (I am going to refer to them by their English names, sorry): dark brown, light brown, khaki, green, and yellow. From what I gather, tanks were delivered base-coated in the khaki colour and the other colours could be applied to suit the theatre of operations. The yellow was almost universally reserved for the trademark wavy lines one sees in colour plates (they're fairly obvious in B&W photos too.) In 1942, new orders were issued which apparently deleted the light brown colour from the Army's inventory and sustituted a lighter green which you'll hear referred to as "willow" green. Around this time we also start to hear of a colour called "parched grass" - this may be a translation of either the existing khaki or light brown colours, or an entirely new colour. I don't know - authors seem to throw this "parched grass" name around quite liberally.

Another wrench in the works of trying to figure colours out from period photos is that while there official orders regarding which colours to use, where and how liberally to apply them, etc, these orders seem to have been treated in the field more like suggestions than any official policy.

After studying colour photos of Japanese armour knocked out or captured on Peleliu, Saipan, Tarawa, Makin, and Biak, I've arrived at the opinion that due to the tropical locale, the green and dark brown colours saw the most use; upper hulls and turrets were painted almost exclusively in these two colours. A noteable exception to this would be the independent company which fought on Guadalcanal, which appears to have used the light brown (or khaki) as well on the upper hull and in some cases skipped the wavy yellow lines. The lower hull - particularly behind the running gear - usually appears to have been left painted khaki, or possibly been repainted in the light brown colour, sometimes with one or two of the other colours added to the wheels and bogies (such as at Tarawa) or with the yellow lines extending down the lower hull (as at Makin)



Above is a turret blown off a Type 95 Ha Go on Saipan; I think it's a good example of fairly fresh paint, or at least, paint which hasn't begun to fade too much yet. Note how difficult it is to tell where the dark brown is.



Here we have the running Type 95 captured on Makin (photographed at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii - thanks to Tracy Hancock for e-mailing me this one); note the upper hull is divided equally between the green and dark brown, while the drive sprocket is painted a lighter colour. Compare this scheme to the colour grabs already posted of the tanks knocked out on Peleliu - not unlike German armour, the green tended to fade fairly quickly. The available literature I've read seems to indicate that unit commanders didn't spend a lot of time repainting their vehicles even after a change in thatre of operations, so I believe that this is a faded version of the early war green, not "willow" green.



This is a Type 95 knocked out on Guam; at first I thought it was tinted or colourized after the fact, but after seeing a few other colour shots if this is colourized then whoever did it did a remarkably good job matching the green and brown. I've included it because it shows the area around the final drives have been left in khaki, but note also that the hull MG mount has been left unpainted, as well as the silver colour the inside of the final drive hatches have been painted.



This is a periscope from a Type 3 Chi Nu; I'm including it here because I'll not likely find a better example of any Japanese colour from WW2. In his MilMod article, Dave Harper refers to this colour as being similar to "Afrika Korps desert yellow", and it does come off as a kind of more ochre-y version of RAL 8000.



Let's re-visit Tim Coulson's screen grab of "Izumo", blown apart during the counterattack on Peleliu's airfield. The light colour on the lower hull sides wraps around onto each side of the rear hull plate - it's probably khaki, again, but light brown was also recommended for this area. The impression I get is that the light brown colour could even have been lighter than the khaki, but as yet I haven't seen anything conclusive.



A Type 95 captured on Biak - as I said earlier, in 1942 a new colour scheme was introduced; possibly it's no coincidence that around this time Japanese tanks also start appearing spray painted rather than brush painted. While it's annecdotal at best, I have a hunch that with the new colour scheme the colours also began to be applied at the factory. We start seeing this on Biak and Sarmi, and then on Iwo Jima. I have a hard time believing that, on islands with no ready source of electricity, a unit commander would allow the use of precious gasoline to run a generator to spray paint his tanks if he had a ready supply of men with paintbrushes.

Also, as tanks guns and their mounts were delivered by the foundry to the tank assembly plants pre-assembled and pre-painted in khaki, there is the evidence that towards the end of the war we start seeing tanks (like the Type 97 Shinhoto Chi Ha's on Iwo Jima) with their main guns and mounts left painted only in khaki. As is obvious from the Schofield Ha Go, unit-level painting went over the guns and mounts with green and brown, but factory jobs could probably have just left this area of the tank in its original basecoat.

So with this in mind, I think the light green colour in this photo might actually be "willow" green and not faded dark green. Again, this is just my opinion. Note also the really sloppy application of the yellow disruptive lines - soon enough these would officially be discontinued (they're not altogether obvious on photos of tanks knocked out or captured on Iwo Jima, and entirely absent on newer tanks such as the Type 3 Chi Nu photographed in Japan after the war.)

[Dan Reed]

Darren,
Very interesting info here.
I'm looking forward to you getting some paint on.
Are there any paint manufacters out there that make Japanese colors?
Dan

[Darren Gawle]

Gunze Sangyo has two colour sets for Japanese armour, one for pre-1942 and the other is post-1942, but I decided to go with my own mixes.

I'm reverse-masking; spraying the "last" colour first, masking it off, and continuing with the "next" colour. In this case, I started with the yellow lines and then applied the dark brown. Because it's enamel I've let that coat cure over the weekend before masking it.

DG

[Dan Reed]

What are you using for masking?