Saburo Sakai's
Mitsubishi A6M2a Zero Type 11

The Type11 was the original production version of the Zero. It was strictly a land-based aircraft and did not have the naval modifications such as a tail-hook and folding wing-tips seen on later versions. There were only 64 Type11's build before introduction of the carrier-based version.

This is the third Zero I've built and I have a feeling there'll be quite a few more. In fact, there's another almost finished and several more in the "to-do" pile. Most of the parts, if not all, are common with the two previous ones, a Nakajima A6M2-N Rufe seaplane and a Mitsubishi A6M3 Zero Type32 .

As with the other two, this is a Hasegawa kit. The ends of the box identify this kit as a "new tool", but I couldn't notice any difference from the others I build. Maybe it's an improvement over an earlier release from Hasegawa.

Construction was typical of the other Zero models I'd done, and for that matter any other Hasegawa kit from the last ten years or so. The kit is molded in light grey plastic and is flash-free with almost no mold lines evident. What there were, I scraped off with an X-Acto blade.

As with many of Hasegawa's kits, this one boasts exceptional boxart by Koike Shigeo. I would have liked to do the aircraft depicted on the box, but wasn't sure if I'd be able to do the colour justice. The front of the plane from just behind the cockpit is a green-grey mixture.

There are four markings provided in the kit, all from the 12th Flying Group. I'm pretty sure that this unit is one that served in China. Three of the colour schemes are a mix of grey and green-grey, and the other is overall grey. One is not identified, two are identified as being assigned to Lt. Minoru Suzuki and the last, the one I choose, belonged to the rather colourful Saburo Sakai.

Being provided markings for one of Saburo Sakai's aircraft more than made up for my reluctance to try the green-grey scheme. Unlike the Allied and the other Axis partners, Japan discouraged pilots from seeking individual recognition for kills, so there is rarely any true totals for Japan's premier fighter pilots.

Born in Saga on Kyushu Island in 1916, Saburo Sakai enlisted in the IJN in 1933 when he was 16.Four years later he started training as a naval aviator. In 1938 he was sent to China and scored a victory on his first combat mission and gained another before transferring to Tainan.  On December 8, 1941, Sakai was part of the attack on Clark Field in the Philipines and was able to shoot down a P-40, which was the first American plane lost in that theater. Saburo Sakai recorded at least 64 victories while serving with the IJN and finished the war ranked third overall. His exploits are the stuff of legend. As an experiment, Sakai once flew a Zero for 12 hours just to see how great the aircraft's endurance was. During the course of the war, he managed to shoot down at least one of every type of aircraft the Americans used in the Pacific theater.

Sakai once jumped 2 B-26s and shot down one of them and got a few shots at the other before it escaped into cloud. It turns out that the surviving B-26 was carrying Lyndon Johnson. One wonders how the sixties would have turned out if Mr. Johnson hadn't been around. In 1943, Sakai was shot in the head during an engagement with a group of Dauntlesses and managed to fly 560 miles over 4 1/2 hours to his home base. He had paralyzing wounds in his left leg and upper arm, permanent blindness in his right eye and temporary blindness in his left, jagged pieces of metal in his back and chest, and the heavy fragments of two fifty caliber machine gun bullets imbedded in his skull. He survived and became a flight instructor. A year later, and blind in one eye, he returned to the skies and shot down four more aircraft before the end of the war. In all, Sakai logged 1,700 hours in the A6M series aircraft. After the war he commented that if the Germans had a 1,000 Zeros with it's incredible range instead of the Bf-109 in 1940, England might not have come out of the Battle of Britain intact.

I painted the aircraft with Testor's ModelMaster enamels and used Tenax 7R and Humbrol cement for construction. The canopy was masked with Parafilm M. I did not need any putty during construction.

I think I should dig up a real old kit soon as the kits I've built in the last few years are really eroding those basic modeling skills. That's not a complaint by any means, but I think we as modelers are really getting spoiled. This is indeed the "Golden Age" of kit-making. When I think back to some of those old Airfix and Revell kits I started building in the sixties, I just shudder.

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