Model Forum / General / Models / June 2007

Hi Lance, I have several books on the Zero and from what I see all photos of
A6M2 appear to be light grey to a light greyish green color most early war
Zeros upto the  A6M2a were painted IJN grey
subsequent Zeros A6Ms 22-63 started painting the IJN or Nakajima Greens here
is one link that may help you out
http://www.j-aircraft.com/walk/walkarou.htm look fwd to seeing pictures of
you completed model

You may want to check out one or more of the attached sites.

Good luck on your project.

http://www.modelingmadness.com/kitindex/kitindexa.htm
http://www.cybermodeler.com/hobby/kits/tam/kit_tam_a6m2.shtml
http://j-aircraft.com/gallery/navy/a6m2_gallery.htm

Back when I did one, I used Tamiya Japanese Navy Dark Green with an
underside of Japanese Navy Grey. These are a different shade than the
Japanese Army colors. I;m sorry, I don't remember the bottle color
numbers. After I was finished, I gave the bottles to a former brother-
in-law. He painted his models with a base coat of silver and a couple
of days later, rubbed the pieces down for a nice weathered effect on
the wingwalks and fuselage areas.

Where did you find it?
I thought they were pulled from WallyWorld by 21st, who were going to
retail them differently.

I am assuming

A buddy of mine used a large black "Marks a Lot" and goes over the
black cowl with it.  He got a blue-black sheen to the cowling that
looked really effective.

~Rick~

As other have said, J-aircraft.com is hands down the best current reference
for JNAF colors. Based on reading most of what's there, I've come to the
conclusion that any one of the three possibilities below will give something
in the ballpark for the gray-ish overall color for early war Zeros:

Testors Model Master RLM Gray 02, possibly lightened a bit with white.

Testors Model Master paints mixed: 20 parts SAC Bomber Tan, 11 parts White,
0.9 parts Zinc Chromate Green

Polly Scale (acrylic) Concrete (Railroad colors line). This is different
from the Floquil (enamel) Concrete. I have read, but cannot confirm, that
the Floquil color lightened with white is close to the Polly Scale color.

Pip Moss