Type96
Four Mitsubishi Navy Type 96 Carrier-based Fighters (Mitsubishi A5M4 “Claude”) of the Soryu Fighter Group (Imperial Japanese Navy) break away from their formation. In their colourful schemes, with sleek, gleaming silver wings, elegant lines, and innocently curved inverted gull wings, they appear almost like a motion study of a single aircraft, demonstrating all the beauty of a machine in flight. But it is the summer of 1939 in Japan, and these Claudes are training for a far darker purpose: to bring terror to the people of China and, soon, to spread war across the entire Pacific. –144 scale display
The Diorama
For a long while I had a scene in mind, where a few aircraft break out of their formation in one direction. I had seen an image of Buffalos over Miami from 1942 where such a situation was captured and I was very interested in the fact, that even though it is one single photo showing several aircraft it appears like a motion study of just one single airvraft. I knew I would build such a scene some day, but that I would adapt the idea to an A5M Distplay i knew the moment i saw the beautiful scheme of the SORYU Fighter Group during training flights in 1939. I Built it from the beautiful 1/144 A5M kit from Sweet, the most beautiful kit I have ever built. It’s perfect.