I have seen at least three different illustrations of the markings of Fuchida's B5N Kate as it appeared in the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
The first comes from the old Profile publicats which shoes his plane in bare metal on the windgs and fuselage. The horizontal and vertical stablizer are marked in red and yellow stripes which span the full chord of the stablizers. A small aircraft number appears in the top stripe on the tip of the vertical stab.
Illustration number two comes from Donald W Thorpe's book "Japanese Navel Air Force Camouflage and Markings World War II. It depicts the same striping on the stablizers as the illustration in Profile publications, however the wings and fuselage are now a solid green with the bottom of the plane in light grey. This book was published in 1977 and the author makes the point that this illustration was executed under the direction of Mitsuo Fuchida himself and so I am inclined to mark my plane this way however....
More recent illustrations on boxtop art from various manufacturers indicate a third scheme that shows the horizontal stabilzers as solid red while the vertical stablizer is red with three yellow stripes, the bottom two of which do NOT cover the full chord of the stabilizers while the top yellow stripe does. The aircraft number here is larger, in yellow, and fills in the area between the top and second stripe down.
Is there anybody out there who can tell me which is the most accurate illustration of these three? I would like to get this right... the model I have is an old Nichimo version of the plane. It has been in my stash for years and I am soon ready to begin work on her. Tom Beccone, age 73, Exton PA