A Japanese Pacific Clipper?

The Kawanishi H6K flying boat, codenamed Mavis by the Allies during WWII, was born in the late 1930s in response to a perceived need for the Japanese to have a long range transport to connect their Pacific possessions. The Americans were introducing their Sikorsky and Martin Clipper boats and such types were clearly a necessity for any nation seeking to develop their empire in the vast open spaces of the Pacific. The H6K definitely possessed phenomenal range, but it's questionable as to whether it was a genuinely civilian machine. The Dai Nippon aircraft had limited passenger capacity and seem to have been used to ferry government officials around the region. During the war the H6K's range made it a natural fit for maritime patrol but it proved far too easy to shoot down. Kawanishi's later H8K Emily, vaguely resembling the Short Sunderland, was a much tougher proposition and was regarded by some as the War's best flying boat.

Anyway, I wanted to expand my collection of wall-hung 1930s civil airliners/flying boats, and the H6K was next. The one available kit in 1:144 scale is by Trumpeter; they offer two kits, one the military boat and this, the notionally civil transport. The main visual difference is the lack of waist gun blisters (Catalina-style), and of course the bare metal Dai Nippon scheme.

There's the box top. Click on it if you want to look more closely; I just want to point out a few places where Trumpeter have been a little vague on accuracy. The main issue is that the pre-war Dai Nippon machines were H6K2-Ls (the L indicates the transport role), but as you can see Trumpeter have used the H6K-5 as the basis for this kit. In fact, you can't build the plane seen in the picture, from what's in the box. You'll note that my model has propellers equipped with spinners, appropriate for the H6K5, but as the painting shows, J-BFOZ had propellers with bare hubs. Could I have changed things? Maybe but I'm afraid I was confronting this late on and shrugged it away. Shame on me. Also for the lack of two portholes under the wings, which you can see in the painting. The odd thing is that when one looks closely at the moulding inside the fuselage half, they have a ghostly suggested presence, as if they had thought about including them, but then said "Nah".

However, I did do some extra work on something else which isn't evident in the painting, namely the supporting structure between wing and fuselage. True I somewhat overdid it, but I think it's truer to the struts(?) I see in Googled photos of the actual aircraft, something much sturdier than a pair of rigging wires. Oh, the rigging! (And radio wires.) There is much more of it than one would suspect. Trumpeter don't give any guide for it, and the painting doesn't give you enough detail, but I think I've got it right in the end. 

Compared with most kits I make, I was a little lacking in references for this one; the H6K wasn't an important type. As you can see I set it floating in the water, with a boat moving in towards the door in the port fuselage side, delivering an official with briefcase. Or so I imagine. Scouring the net for tiny figures is beginning to pay off :)  I wondered about adding a mooring line but couldn't find a photo showing how it might attach to the nose, or how the hatch there opened. Fun was had as usual with taking a belt sander to the hull, along with figuring out the right angle of tilt, because since the H6K used floats rather than side sponsons (see my previous kits of the Dornier Do-X and the Boeing 314 Clipper), it naturally settled down on one side or the other. My waves got very gloopy this time around. But remember this is seen behind an acrylic case, from a little distance away. I'm pleased with the end result, and it now sits quite prettily on my wall.