Acrysion - IJA šedá

The Japanese army gray of the undersides

Army aircraft had their own palette compared with the naval ones and their underside tended to be a light gray with a cast toward green. The shade covered the belly of the fuselage, the underside of the wings and the tail surfaces of machines such as the Ki-27, the Ki-43 or the Ki-51, and the same tone also appeared on trainers, which flew in it overall.

With trainers in particular the color is rewarding, because there it meets pronounced orange areas. The contrast between the dull gray-green tone and a saturated orange gives a model a legibility that combat machines do not have, and in a small scale it works excellently in a display case.

Notes on use

The undersides are sprayed first, while the model can still be turned over without worry about the parts already finished. It pays to go over the inside of the landing gear bays and the doors as well, because on a number of Japanese machines they had the same paint as the surrounding surface.

The medium is water-thinnable and needs proper stirring from the bottom before it is drawn out. On the underside of a model a fine soiling also works well: dust from the wheels, darker traces behind the exhausts and around the drains. It is applied only once the paint has dried and in thin steps, so that the original light tone, on which the whole impression rests, is not lost under the grime.

The trainers of the Japanese army are worth a modeler's attention also because they survive in a greater number of photographs than the combat types. It can be read from them how the paint aged: the dull gray-green tone passed into beige over time, while the orange areas by contrast hold a saturated color right to the end of service.

Apply the paint in thin steps therefore and compare the shades in daylight.