Okay, thank you, Lawdog. Nice work. (Did you know that about ¾ of all A6M5s were made by Nakajima?)
The Two Planes That Went to Ie Island
One was a G6M1-L, which was a conversion of the ill-conceived G6M heavy fighter. It has a hatch in the left rear fuselage that is not round. The ventral gun blister of the heavy fighter was removed to make the transport. I imagine that required some touch-up painting. Its passenger seating, if any, may be difficult to track down. It would be a royal pain in the bippie to move one or both lateral blisters forward on the kit to make a G6M1-L.
The other was a Model 11, which is not a Model 22, 24 or 34. So, we may or may not be able to extrapolate color information using the 22, 24 or 34.
Three Theories on Basic Interior Coloring of Betty
A. High-quality green finish for skin and formers of bombardier’s compartment, cockpit, tail gunner’s compartment, and possibly also the dorsal gunner’s area, but aotake central fuselage.
Mr. Chris Cowx reported that he saw aotake in the central fuselage of one or two Model 11s. He was looking at wrecks that had been outdoors a long time and he didn’t give much detail.
B. High-quality green finish for the entire fuselage interior.
An artist’s conception of a Model 11 interior appears in Osamu Tagaya’s book, Imperial Japanese Naval Aviator 1937-1945 by Osprey. No idea on what it is based.
There is also an artist’s conception in Maru Mechanic/Mechanic of World Aircraft showing a Model 22 with what seems to be a fully painted interior.
There is Robert Mikesh’s statement in Japanese Cockpit Interiors, Part 2, about the NASM Betty nose, “A consistent color [FS] 34151 is used throughout the interior.” This indicates a matt paint, which surprises me for the fuselage skin and formers, and suggests to me a somewhat oxidized finish. That booklet also has a 1944-vintage black and white photo of the waist gun area of a Model 22. It looks to have been matt, but the skin seems blotchy.
C. Some sort of gray for the fuselage interior, per Tamiya’s instructions.
We can only guess how Tamiya came to that conclusion. Large amounts of grays in a Japanese Navy plane of this period would be very unusual.
I have two color photos of the inside of the Admiral Yamamoto wreck. They were published in the pamphlet “Papua New Guinea Battlefields” in 1981.
The first one was probably taken with a flash. It shows the inside of the wrecked central fuselage, including the left side entry hatch. The view is forward from the tail gunner’s compartment bulkhead. The condition of the interior paint is terrible; this wreck had been outdoors for over 20 years before it was photographed.
The hatch interior is a speckled mess. Maybe 50% is bare metal, quite dull and corroding. On maybe 35% there is what I take to be very deteriorated paint or mold or algae which is a light khaki green along the lines of FS _4552, but a little browner. On the remainder are virtually black areas. They may be alive, or they may be paint.
The formers in this photo are about 75% bare metal, and 25% in a variety of greens, ranging from something like FS _4441 all the way to approximately _4092.
The skin is terribly blotchy and is missing maybe 60% of its paint. However, there are spots of 1 to 8 inches long that are very dark, almost black. They seem black-green, but some spots may be a super-dark blue.
The corrugated flooring also has some of the same very dark colors, but also some faint traces of translucent greens and turquoises.
The second photo shows a bit of canopy frame. The inner surface has a huge variety of greens, the darkest of which is roughly between FS_4108 and _4128. (Canopy frames were often brush painted with aotake and nothing more. They do not necessarily match the fuselage skin in the cockpit or the instrument panel.)
In other words, the photos show a patchy mess of colors consistent with aotake. I think we need to get shed of the idea that aotake was always translucent or always some sort of electrifying aqua color.
The Modeling Issues
It is tempting to think that the interior of a Japanese Navy bomber would be pretty much all one color and all to the same quality standard, but when we consider that some parts, such as radios, guns, and a lot of other things were provided by subcontractors, and that in many cases the subcontractors painted those things in other colors, we can see why a seat may not be the same color as the floor and why the little toilet in Betty may not be the same color as her instrument panel. In WWII, Japan relied on thousands of small workshops (under 20 employees) to turn out all kinds of things for airplanes. It goes without saying that they didn’t use identical paints.
That brings us to “aviation archaeology”, “relicology”, “wreckology” or whatever you want to call it. How much do you want to extrapolate about the many colors inside an airplane from a scrap of skin that a serviceman cut off a plane 70 years ago? Or from the photos in my travel booklet?
Although greens like RAF cockpit greens tend to be associated more with Nakajima products for the navy than Mitsubishi’s, I won’t say that they could never be found in a Betty. I think my little travel pamphlet shows that they did turn up in the central fuselage in small quantity on little patches of formers. Some of what I see in the Yamamoto wreck could easily lead someone to think of RAF cockpit greens. Quite possibly the instrument panel, too. Maybe a seat in the nose. Maybe a map case. Much of the skin? Not from what I have read and seen.
Goldhammer, I like that you look beyond model airplane paints to find a color you think is pretty close. In fact, if you were to add a little black and a little warm dark brown to that Model Master 4862 Panzer Green, you’d get pretty close to Gunze Mr. Color 126, “Cockpit Color Mitsubishi Group”, which I’d be tempted to use for much of the interior of a new Model 11 Betty, except in the central fuselage. What you’re modeling is not a new plane, so I think the 4862 shows excellent instincts about how to start the bombardier’s compartment, cockpit and tail gunner’s compartment, just so long as you don’t go too monotone in those compartments.
If you make an aotake central fuselage, it might be tricky to render in scale. Personally, I would not use layers of translucent paints over silver or spray metallics. This compartment was not at all flashy, if I am reading these color photos correctly.