Thanks everyone for the kind words.
Hey, I didn't want to go into the "shamrock" discussion in this thread either
Don, I'm glad to know you are skeptic about the shamrock scheme because I am, too!
Michael, thanks for pointing me to the picture of the "blue tail" Hien. Now I know where the livery of this model came from. I'm glad to know that Mr. Marek did not make that up himself.
I'm no expert or historian and I may be wrong, but here's what I understand from various sources (mostly in Japanese, because it is my mother tongue)
- Color coding of Shotais did exist. (Thianks Shrike for pointing that out) However, I could not find any accounts from the suvivors or the historians (in Japanese) stating that the color coding was used for painting the vertical stabilizers. In fact, the color coding rule was not strictly followed in late 1944 and 1945.
- The red-tail scheme was originally designed for Hagakure Tai (the 'ramming' unit). After Major Kobayashi came to lead the 224th Sentai, he also adopted the red-tail scheme for his unit, which is Honbu Shotai.
I got to go now. I couldn't get to the 'asking for help' part again! This model has a problem in its landing gear. That is why I stopped building and created this thread. I will show you the pictures to explain what is wrong later.
Thanks,
Shinji (ruf0us)